Arantza Portabales has become one of the sensations of the black novel. After red beauty i The secret life of Úrsula Baspublica The man who killed Antía Morgade: in a meeting of old friends in Santiago, during the Feast of the Apostle, one of them is killed
She has a degree in Law. Did he quit because he was bored?
What bored me was life, it is impossible for Law to be boring (laughs). Law is mathematics, moreover it is infinite, and as if that were not enough, it changes every fortnight. On the other hand, in life, when it suddenly becomes monotonous, it must be turned around.
Is it heresy to place a murder no less than during the celebrations of the Apostle?
I just needed to mix murder with heresy. No, this murder is born from Agatha Christie’s idea to turn off the light and have a dead person appear. Since it has been many years since Agatha Christie, I decided that instead of turning off the light, I would turn them all on. And of course, in Galicia all the lights are only lit on the night of the Apostle
Are dinner parties where old friends meet a danger?
Totally. One realizes that one will never live up to the expectations, not of others but of oneself. At these dinners, one does not face former colleagues, but the self of thirty years ago, what one wanted to be and has not become.
For the sake of the authors of black novels, in Spain there should be free access to weapons, so we would have as many crimes as in the United States?
(Laughter) It’s wonderful that we have to leave so much of crime to the imagination. Nor is it so necessary that what is practical and real should invade everything.
Children’s centers appear in the book. Right now it is being discussed whether it is necessary to extend the age of criminal responsibility.
In general, the problem with laws is that they have a vocation for universality, and they always seem to us failures when they are applied to a particularity. This will always happen to us. Having an opinion on this is complicated. What would I think if I were the mother of a victim? What if I were the mother of a minor who has gone out of my hands? The view would be very different. This question has so many answers. In other words, I haven’t answered it (laughs).
And in addition, the degree in Law has come out.
Of course. Besides, it’s very true. You have to try to cover the most possibilities, but there will always be something left out. Nature and chaos theory take their course and make something that was legislated for universality suddenly, when applied to a specific case, distort reality. It’s a common problem.
No solution?
It should be solved by a wonderful thing called common sense.
Should we suspect one another as God has suspected us?
The kind lady who should dwell in me, should answer him no. The pragmatic lady that lives in me, answers that of course.
The pragmatic lady in me tells her that of course we should be suspicious of each other
One of the characters in the book says that “there are days when one is unhappy and others when one is fully aware of one’s unhappiness”. Are we never completely happy?
On the contrary, I think there are two kinds of happiness, one is very full and the other has many reminiscences. When one is fully happy and aware of it, it’s boom, boom, boom. But there is a terrible moment in life, which is when you look back and see those small moments, that you were very happy and you were not aware of it. You didn’t enjoy them as much as you should have. Then you say “damn, but I was very happy here!” She was sitting on the beach reading a book and was not aware of it.
Does it make you sad, when this happens to you?
No, on the contrary, it’s wonderful, because you realize that you were happy, you remember it with nostalgia, with the biased look of time
“It is not true that time heals everything”, says another character.
Everything leaves scars, nothing goes away forever. Time helps to see things with a different perspective.
Is the phrase “I accompany you in the feeling” any consolation?
The phrase is just a cliché. One does not accompany in the feeling. If you really feel like the other, you don’t need to say it.