Gabriel Janer Manila: "I had police officers in the classroom taking notes on everything."

BarcelonaGabriel Janer Manila He has reached the age of 85 with a brand new book fresh off the press, Gallery of Solitudes (New Moll Publishing House, 2025), and several projects in mind. The career of the Mallorcan writer, born in Algaida on November 1, 1940, has been one of the most prolific and recognized of his generation, and he has received awards such as the Josep Pla Prize (in 1971 with The alicorns), the San Juan (The rivers of Babylon, 1984), Charlemagne (The Burned Gardens, 1997) and Ramon Llull (Tigers, 2007).

The first book of his that I read was called Journey into the heart of the cold (Cruïlla, 1995) and told the story of a group of ants traveling inside a refrigerator to find four pomegranate seeds. She had been writing children's and young adult literature for years. What was the initial impetus for starting?

— The best things in life often happen by chance. I started writing because a friend who edited an almanac asked me for a story. The only requirement was that it had to be Christmas-themed. At first, I didn't know what to do, because I had the impression that everything about Christmas had already been written... but then I invented the character of King Gaspar.

His Gaspar is an immigrant dressed as a king in a toy store during the Christmas holidays. He spends his time remembering his humble past: "The world belongs to those with money, he thought," we read. "He knew the world would never be his and would have been content with a house with wide windows."

— Since the story was very well received by the reader, I delved deeper into the character's history and dedicated an entire novel to him. King Gasparwhich I submitted to the Folch i Torres prize and it won. It was fantastic.

Until then, she had dedicated herself to adult novels with titles such as The abyss (Moll, 1969), The alicorns (Destino, 1972) and The Agony of the Willows (Destino, 1973).

— Because King Gaspar It went very well; I ended up writing a handful more novels for young readers.

King Gaspar It is considered the novel that launched children's and young adult literature in the Balearic Islands. It was published by La Galera, the same publisher that had previously published The house under the sand, of Joaquim Carbó; Saffron milk cap, of Josep Vallverdú, and Pitus' Zoo, by Sebastià Sorribes.

— It was the moment when Catalan literature for children took a leap forward, and this was largely due to The GalleyIf I hadn't thought about Mr. Doria's publishing house [Andreu Doria y Dexeus] and a prize like the Folch y Torres, perhaps I would never have written it. King GasparGalera wasn't a mushroom that just sprang up, but a project that gradually attracted more and more people. And that was a real achievement, because it succeeded in creating many Catalan readers, children, but also teachers: at that time, Catalan schools were vibrant and there was a great desire to work together.

You knew this process firsthand: you had studied teaching at the Normal School of Palma and worked as a teacher for years in rural schools and in a peripheral neighborhood of Palma.

— A great collective effort was made by writers, teachers, publishers, librarians, and reading promoters to bring our literature up to the level of that being produced in other countries. Everyone understood that a reader is not born, but rather developed. Educational intervention is fundamental.

His generation spoke Catalan at home, but at school everything was in Spanish.

— When I wrote The abyss I was a complete novice, a learner... You're always a learner, but back then I knew nothing, just a little bit of spelling. During the years I was a teacher, many of the kids in my classes didn't even know that the language they spoke could be written.

He began to dedicate himself to it in the early 1960s, when Francoist repression was still very strong.

— There was a lot of fear. The teachers who had been reinstated after being persecuted taught in fear. They found it very difficult to use Catalan. The same was true for the Francoist teachers, of whom there were also many. In 1963, I started teaching Catalan outside of regular school hours. Only volunteer students came, but they ended up becoming many, because I made sure that those who came told the others how much they enjoyed it. I always finished the classes by reading them a poem that would make them think. We didn't talk about it until a few days later... I wanted the students to have a profound experience.

And did he get ahead?

— Yes. At the end of 1973, with the students from the school I was then directing, we prepared a theatrical performance full of Catalan poems. We had everything very well rehearsed and polished, and on the very day we premiered it, we learned that Carrero Blanco had been assassinated.

Were they able to represent him?

— In the end, yes. A lot of people came, and in the end they were applauding enthusiastically, I don't know if it was because of our show or because of the death of Carrero Blanco.

She ended up swapping school classrooms for university classrooms, didn't she?

— I started teaching at the university the same year Franco died. There were police officers in the classroom taking notes on everything. I knew who they were, but the students didn't. I had to be very careful not to provoke them, because that would have caused them problems. Even so, I remember it as a very beautiful time... My field of research was the anthropology of education. I was very interested in the problems of children living in the jungle, and I dedicated my dissertation to one of them, Marcos, who lived in the Sierra Morena forests for twelve years.

He continued teaching at the university until 2015, when he retired.

— Even now, I'd go back to teaching if they'd let me. Sometimes I'm reading a book and instinctively think, "I have to explain this to my students." But I don't have any students anymore...

In 2016 he published the first volume of his memoirs, It snowed yesterday (Bow). His parents played a major role.

— Those were terrible years. My parents were very young and poor when they got married. I was born when my mother was 20 and my father was 24. They both worked very hard, and I was their only child. I never lacked anything, and you could even say I was a little spoiled, because I was the only one on either side of the family who was well-off... As a child, if someone gave me a peseta, I was happy.

How would you describe the context in which you grew up?

— I was born in late 1940, the first year after the war. The repression was terrible. The war was over, but people were still being killed. There were many personal vendettas... There were several murders in my family. You never forget that. When I was little, everyone around me was crying, and that left its mark on me. It was very difficult for me to free myself from that feeling of defeat. I think I started writing because I wanted to tell my story and the immense pain of what was happening.

When he started publishing, the man who censored his texts was from his town.

— When it comes to censorship The abyssMy first novel had far more direct references to me than a typical censor. It was worse when, after five or six novels, the Public Order Court prosecuted me for The Agony of the Willowswhich Destino had published in 1973. I had to pay a bail of 30,000 pesetas, which I didn't have, and I had to go and sign in at the Palma courthouse every week to maintain my provisional freedom and avoid having to go to Carabanchel prison...

How was it resolved?

— I had the support of many writers, including Miquel Àngel Riera, Josep Maria Llompart and the Maria Aurèlia Capmany. It was she who spoke with Josep Melià, who was secretary to Franco's Minister of Housing, and convinced him that this case against me was outrageous. The minister ended up sending a letter to the public order prosecutor to have me arrested.

Why had he been prosecuted?

— They said that in the book he had insulted the fallenHe would never have done it, because they had died fighting the war, with immense compassion and courage. He did criticize the regime's use of them. fallenThe regime turned my criticism into an insult. They still do that now, using lies as truths.

How did they experience it at home?

— We were very nervous. We had four young children, but we didn't have a penny. I didn't talk about it with my parents. My mother, after reading one of my earlier novels, had told me, "All I could think about was where I should hide." The regime made you feel very afraid; it left a deep mark on her.

When Franco died, did his literature enter a calmer phase?

— Our lives changed. If there were police officers in the classroom during the first term, they never returned after the Christmas holidays.

He published many books in the 1980s and 1990s. In the second volume of his memoirs, Love, you are not tired (Proa, 2019), talks about the importance of three authors: Jaume Vidal Alcover, Llorenç Moyà and Josep Maria Llompart.

— Llompart considered me like a little brother, and his wife, Encarnación, like a son. For more than two decades, we spent New Year's Eve together. That included 1972, the last one he lived to see. My wife made him a special dinner because there were many things he couldn't eat. He was well that night and even wanted to read some poems, but he died at the end of January.

Is it true that on one of these New Year's Eve evenings Josep Maria Llompart and you invoked Llorenç Villalonga?

— Those nights lasted for many hours, and anything could happen. There could be dancing, arguments, debates, songs, poetry readings... They started at nine at night and ended at six in the morning. Maria Aurèlia [Capmany] would give us a prediction of the future. She had a terrible temper and a sharp wit. She was hilarious. On New Year's Eve 1980, almost a year after Villalonga's death, Llompart suggested we hold a séance. We brought out a small round table and sat down. We invoked the spirit of Llorenç Villalonga... and suddenly appeared.

What happened?

— Llompart asked him if he was in heaven. And Villalonga replied that he was not.

A response that would have been typical of him.

— Of him, or of his characters. Villalonga was a much more widely read author than Llompart, but I don't know if he's remembered fairly. He had many facets. Personally, I think that from then on Bearn [1964] He lowered his standards and began writing literature to mock the world. He had that satirical edge that is sometimes lacking in other authors. And he calculated it very well, because deep down he was a provocateur. He tried to provoke with things that might anger progressives. He defended the monarchy, the army... and while he did so, you thought he didn't believe it himself, not even as a joke.

2025 marked the centenary of Josep Maria Llompart. It was surely a year in which he was very much in mind.

— Yes. Now I'll tell you an anecdote from the time his wife was taking civil service exams in Madrid, and he would come home for lunch every day between jobs: in the mornings he worked in public works, and in the afternoons at the Moll publishing house. One day I told him that a Sara Montiel show was premiering at the Teatre Balear and that we could go see it. He replied: "Liking Montiel is typical of soldiers, but why can't we be soldiers for a few hours?"

Were?

— We brought my mother-in-law, who never went out. We bought tickets for the front rows because we'd heard that Montiel would come down from the stage during the show and sit on the lap of some lucky audience member. When the moment came, she came down from the stage, strolled down the aisle holding the microphone in one hand and dragging the power cord... Sara Montiel was practically sitting on our laps! It was an incredibly frustrating moment!

Lungomare (Proa, 2021), the third and final volume of the memoirs, which covered him up to age 75, was imbued with a certain disenchantment. Why?

— I realize that everything we had imagined could be has turned out to be impossible. Perhaps we have made some of our readers happy, but the world continues on a different path. The end of Lungomare It is the hardest thing I have ever written in my entire life: it is a monologue I have in front of a statue that represents decapitated victory to say that, in some way, my victories have also had their heads cut off.

Tell me one.

— The state of Catalan. During the Franco regime, schools taught in Castilian Spanish, and in institutions, Castilian Spanish was the sole language, but in the street, everyone spoke Catalan. Now, institutions use Catalan for official documents, schools teach in Catalan, and in the street, Castilian Spanish is more prevalent. I see it when I turn on IB3, where journalists speak a refined, sophisticated, and well-studied Catalan, but when they go out to interview ordinary people, those people only speak Castilian Spanish. It's appalling.

She celebrated her 85th birthday with a new book, Gallery of SolitudesWhat's the next project?

— It seems incredible that I've gotten this far. A friend of mine, a doctor, always told me, "May God keep us clear-headed." I'd say that's still true. I'm still writing, not much, but I am writing. And I have ideas for new novels, but sometimes I think it's time to let it go. "That's it," I tell myself. "If you start, you might not finish."