Lazarillo magazine, nº 54, section Meetings before the mirror (Encuentros ante el espejo). Spanish Association of Friends of Children’s and Young Adult Books (Asociación Española Amigos del Libro Infantil y Juvenil). Text published in the print edition of the magazine. Reference website: amigosdellibro.com/revistalazarillo. Photos: Miguel Ángel Montesinos and Marc Bellmunt. Questions from Avilés (Asturias): Rafa Balbuena. Question from Gijón: Paco Abril, director of Lazarillo.
Hello! That one over there in the mirror is me.
Yeah, yeah, I know, you don’t need to tell me. Of course it’s you that’s reflected in me — who else would it be? Only you appear backwards… your right hand is my left, and vice versa. I wonder why your feet don’t show up at the top and your head at the bottom.
Come on, don’t get me tangled up. Since I know you mean to interrogate me, here I am, ready to answer whatever questions you’d like to put to me. Start by telling me about your literary beginnings — that’s what interests the millions of people who read Lazarillo magazine, so don’t exaggerate a thing.
It happened by chance, as so many important things do. I was at a friend’s house and he mentioned there was a short-story contest with a prize of 100,000 pesetas, which is the equivalent of about 600 euros today. It may sound like little now, but with that money, back in 1980, you could buy yourself a car! We made a bet to see which of the two of us could actually write the story. I won the bet; I didn’t win the contest. It was the first thing I’d ever written, but my friends liked it a lot and encouraged me to keep at it. And I began writing stories similar to the ones I liked, and little by little I developed a style of my own.
Oh, I see — the gentleman has a “style of his own,” as if he were a fashion designer. That “style of his own” sounds a touch pretentious, doesn’t it.
Don’t get sharp with me or I’ll throw you out. You’ll have seven years of bad luck, and as superstitious as you are…
Alright, alright, what does that “style of your own” consist of?
The specialists who have studied my books — and there are a few — always say I have a lively, very cinematic style, sometimes poetic, most often humorous, with imaginative wordplay that draws heavily on popular literature, with touches of Gianni Rodari, Miquel Obiols and Lewis Carroll.
Well, well! Not bad at all for a designer of words.
And how did you manage to keep going? Because sometimes the hard part isn’t starting, it’s continuing.
I was lucky enough to win a few contests and be a finalist in others. There was an enormous need for children’s texts in Valencian for the schools. A law had just been passed in 1982 to teach valencià. My books were published and met with some success, which encouraged me to keep writing and publishing.
You always talk about luck — you’ve even gone so far as to say that you don’t just have a lucky charm, but a whole garden with a gardener and all.
It’s true! Apart from the personal good fortune of having a wonderful family, a partner who puts up with me, friends who look after me, love me and have held me up in the tough moments, and a cat who keeps me company, as for Literature (I like to write it with a capital L), I’ve been lucky enough to win some important prizes such as the Lazarillo and the White Raven — and twice at that — to publish with major publishers, and to work with many of the best illustrators from Spain and Latin America. The luck of having this magnificent craft, which even let me live off storytelling exclusively for twelve years, and has taken me travelling across a dozen countries to meet the most fascinating people.
Man, you ramble on like an unwound blind! You know my other trade is oral storytelling.
I know from a good source — and never was the phrase more apt — that you’ve had many trades: cabinetmaker, woodcarver, waiter at weddings, baptisms and communions, dance teacher, radio and TV presenter and scriptwriter, teacher of Language and Literature in Valencian, writer and storyteller… That’s quite a few trades.
I started working at fourteen, and I’ve just turned sixty-nine!
Whoever would tell, eh! You keep the packaging very well preserved! Ha, ha, ha, thanks. Yes, that’s what they say — that I look quite a bit younger. The truth is, when I look at myself in you I can’t believe I’m the age my ID card claims, neither physically nor mentally.
And how do you manage it? What’s the secret?
Maybe it’s because I’m passionate about the things I do, and I really enjoy life.
And how did it come about, that you started telling stories for a living?
Also by chance. One day I got a call from a school where they had read one of my stories and wanted to meet me. It occurred to me to tell them a story, and it worked wonderfully well. And they started calling me from schools now and then — because they wanted to hear my stories, not read my books! From that moment on I became an oral storyteller, although I’d actually started earlier: as a child at the boarding school I attended, on Mondays I’d tell in the playground about the films I’d seen at the cinema on Sundays. Also, one of the few things I remember about my father, who I lost when I was eight, is that he used to tell us stories.
You’ve passed in front of me many times and said, putting on different voices: “The important thing is to tell stories.”
Yes, because you enter the world of Literature through the ear — through the stories, the songs, the knee-rhyme games people tell and sing to us when we’re little. Everyone remembers who told them stories as a child; those things leave an indelible mark. It’s a gesture of love from the people who care for you and build you “a house of words,” as Gustavo Martín Garzo says. In teacher-training colleges, the most important thing they should teach is how to tell and how to sing; everything else you pick up as you go along. Telling stories also develops the imagination, teaches you to listen, helps you grow, and — as I said before — opens the doors to Literature, creating unforgettable, lasting bonds of affection.
Going back to the books, a question I know matters to you: how do you find inspiration?
I find inspiration in five different ways:
1. When my son Carles was a year and a half old there was a total lunar eclipse. Carles couldn’t talk yet. I told him that the Moon was about to go out. We went up to the terrace and I said: “Look, Carles, it’s the Moon.” My son blew at the moon. It was a magical moment. I was so surprised and so fascinated that I thought: “Wow! What went through this child’s head to make him blow at the Moon?” That magical moment drove me to write El niño que apagó la Luna.
2. Other times I take classic tales and turn them on their head: I’ve written a dozen Little Red Riding Hoods, among them ¡Te pillé, Caperucita!, a play I tried to make wildly over-the-top and hilarious.
3. Sometimes I’m commissioned to do things, which I love — for instance, putting together an Abecedario ilustrado.
4. When I discovered Gianni Rodari and his Gramática de la Fantasía, a whole new world opened up for me, and it inspired books like Los viajes de Pericot or El secreto del abuelo.
5. Sometimes I sit down in front of the computer and let myself be carried by a sentence that suddenly pops into my head: “Once upon a time there was a country so small that it didn’t appear on maps, and if it did, it was no bigger than a flyspeck…”, and I keep going until I end up telling, in a wild and fun way, just how stupid it is to invade a country.
You know mirrors are magical objects and can receive messages from anywhere in the world. From Avilés (Asturias) come some very interesting questions for you from the journalist Rafa Balbuena. Rafa asks: “We know it’s hard to choose — you’ve published more than 70 books — but among your works aimed at young readers, do you have a favourite? OK, fine, name ten.”
Phew, that’s hard! I know this is a cliché, but it’s true: books are like children, they come from you and you love them all the same. But if I had to choose, I’d pick the first one: Les aventures de Potaconill. That book introduced me to my friend and wonderful illustrator Paco Giménez, who is the person I’ve worked with the most. Then Cuentos para todo el año, which is my personal best-seller and has opened many doors for me. ¡Te pillé, Caperucita!, which won four prizes — among them the “LAZARILLO” and the “WHITE RAVEN” — and is already almost a classic of Spanish children’s theatre, with hundreds of performances and more than 50 editions between Spanish and Valencian. Marieta i el mort, a zany version of La asadura del muerto, one of my most recent books that’s giving me a lot of joy. The Diferencias collection (3 titles). With those we’re at 7. Poemes sense diminutius, my first poetry book. Abecedario ilustrado, with the luxury of having 27 illustrators on board. El secreto del abuelo, my second “LAZARILLO.” And El Alfarero, el Maharajá y la Muerte, my most recent book (see the review of this book in the “Los escogidos” section).
Rafa Balbuena keeps asking: “Journey, dream, magic and fantastical characters are all very present in your work, though without losing touch with reality. Is that balance deliberate? Does it take a lot of work or a lot of rewriting? Is it a matter of respect for your readers?”
The journey is the most important leitmotiv in literature — there you have The Odyssey and Don Quixote. The journey almost always changes us: in my case a spoilt princess learns sense, or a king troubled by pettiness comes to understand how stupid and senseless it would be to invade another country, or a group of animals realises that cooperating — or even admitting a mistake — is going to make things work better. No, it’s not deliberate, but each of us is the way we are, and our way of thinking ends up showing through, even via fantastical characters and magical situations. I rewrite a lot, but not thinking about morals — rather, thinking about doing it as well as I can. The other part — that contact with reality and that respect — comes naturally to me.
Thanks, Rafa! The one in front of me here owes you a paella.
Let’s continue. Do you care about the look of your books?
Of course! I was lucky enough to start out with a great illustrator, and once you’ve tried the good stuff, the mediocre or the bad just won’t do. I want my books to have the best illustrations, good paper, a publisher that takes care of the design of the collection — and of the authors. I believe our readers deserve the greatest respect and the very best product.
You’ve written narrative, theatre, poetry, visual poetry, radio scripts, television scripts and comics — aren’t you a bit scattered?
Yes, very much so — that’s why poets and playwrights don’t always count me as one of their own. I think what matters is that you have things to tell; the medium or the genre you do it in is something you learn, it’s technique — what’s not so easy is the story, the what, the thing you tell. Besides, I’m very bold and I love taking on new challenges, things I’ve never done before. It doesn’t always work out, but along the way I learn.
You write and you tell stories out loud. Which one do you feel more comfortable with?
Telling and writing are different activities. Both use words, but in different ways. When I tell one of my stories out loud, I have to have “forgotten” it beforehand, because otherwise it doesn’t flow. In oral storytelling you get immediate feedback — in that very instant you know whether you’re connecting with your audience, and if you are, it’s pure magic. Writing has another dimension: you never know whether what you’ve written is going to please anyone. Fortunately, children’s literature doesn’t have the immediacy of adult literature, and for many years your works can stay alive — and you can even receive encouragement and congratulations for things you wrote thirty years ago. So I love both: the immediate response and the one that comes with time.
And that little habit of yours of slipping unexpected phrases into your works — what people call “morcillas” (blood sausages)?
No, no — real blood sausages, especially the onion ones! They’re a little quirk of the brand. They turn up in many of my works. Blood sausages were one of the few good things I ate at the boarding school where I spent six years — I’ve even dedicated an ode to them!
Speaking of food, from Gijón Paco Abril, the director of Lazarillo, also sneaks in and asks you: “If, as the philosopher and anthropologist Ludwig Feuerbach claimed, ‘we are what we eat,’ you — who are a great cook, especially of paellas — what relation does literature have, for you, with the most universal dish of your homeland?”
Paella is a festive dish — a dish for celebrating, for sharing; in fact, you eat it from the same pan. Literature is written to be shared, so that people read us. A paella is friendship, conversation, shared emotion — and that, for me, is what Literature is too.
What do you devote yourself to these days?
Well, I write small things, I sing in a choir, I make paellas for friends, I dote on my grandson Llorenç, I play golf with my brother from time to time, and I keep on telling stories and meeting my readers at schools and libraries.
Well, with that I’ll say goodbye — for now. See you around!
I hope so, because if we didn’t see each other again that would be a bad sign, wouldn’t it?