"Boomers will support social democracy against fascism"

BarcelonaFive years have passed since the publication of Torno a casa (Proa) and it has been a time of great changes and revelations for Joan Carreras (Barcelona, 1962), after a chaotic and sad personal phase, with two traumatic breakups. "For the first time in my life I did something I had never done: asked for help," he confesses. The psychologist diagnosed him with ADHD with high abilities, a condition he had controlled over the years but suffering its consequences, such as obsessive behaviors and depression. "The diagnosis was a brutal shock, but as I got to know the symptomatology, everything started to fit. It's as if I had always been hitting myself in the face, in the body, in the knee, and suddenly someone turned on the light in the room and I could see that there was an open drawer, or the closet door, and that's why it hurt. I wish I had been diagnosed at 30, or at 20 years old; not only for myself, but for them, and for the journalists I've related to and who found me a bit strange," he reflects.

All this he lets go of immediately, right from the start, and with the honesty that has characterized this author and university professor, who over the years has embraced successes —the Sant Jordi prize and the Ciutat de Barcelona prize, for example— and has also made some disappointments public, when a book didn't do as well as he had hoped. And he explains it because this process has changed him from head to toe: "It has explained the last few years to me, but also childhood, youth, maturity, and it has made me write in a different way." The novel he has just published, It would be great (Proa, 2026), does not speak of this discovered condition, but it is imbued with both a "sadness that gets trapped in things, just like dust," he writes, and also with splendid desires to live. "If you get caught up in the sadness of grief, from a loss or a separation, it can become pathological. I have been able to have another relationship without ceasing to be sad about the separation. Simply, it's something that accompanies you, but it doesn't hurt you as much. Now I can understand these things better," he states.

A small world in the center of Badalona

The protagonists of Estaria molt bé are four women in their sixties who have maintained a solid and fluctuating friendship over the years, with an endearing daily life and secrets yet to be discovered. Mar's separation and the start of a new relationship —precisely with a mature writer— serve as the backbone of the story, which features ex-husbands, daughters, new friendships, and old traditions like going to nudist beaches. "Friends are those who have known how to forgive your stumbles. Friendship goes beyond harmony and synchrony. I have friends who have little interest in reading, but we are friends. Now it's starting to happen that there are friends with whom I don't meet because the topics of conversation are very unpleasant. If they need me, I'll lend them a hand, but I won't sit down to dinner to endure the far-right's arguments," laments Carreras. The book addresses current issues, but not from an ideological debate but from the daily life of friends at the dinner table.

The center of Badalona functions as a small world where the neighbors and routines are those of a lifetime. "In the lives of normal, ordinary people, in ours, things also happen that can become literature," he assures. This is reflected in a calm and meticulous narrative, a grateful and organic read. Carreras does not hide his desire to connect with the general public. "I have never wanted to be a minority author, I want to be popular. I write to connect with people and for them to be moved by my books," he assures. He is aware that the protagonists, by gender, age, and status, are the usual audience of reading clubs. "I didn't do it thinking about that, but it would be amazing if they liked it," he acknowledges. He assures that he writes blindly, without a map, but even without a compass. "I have felt very comfortable in this feminine world that has emerged for me. I have always been surrounded by women. I say, and someone looks at me strangely, but it's a way of putting it, that I have always felt truly bisexual in all senses of life. I am comfortable in different roles and I am not ashamed to boast of a special sensitivity or tenderness," he defends.

Carreras says he feels a creative and vital effervescence that age has not diminished and that he shares with his four friends. In the book, he takes the opportunity to criticize the association that is sometimes made between boomer and idiot, a criticism that children often launch condescendingly. "We boomers are the ones who will defend pensions, public education, public healthcare. We boomers will uphold social democracy against fascism. We boomers set out when we were very young to make the world a better place. We carry it inside. Why can't we be proud of our contributions to society? We are in favor of the welfare state, of social justice, and we believe that taxes are a good idea for leveling inequality. Forgive me for giving you a pure social democratic speech, but what is social democratic today is like being communist twenty years ago," he states.