Pere Rovira: "My father taught me two fundamental things: to hunt, not to be obedient."

Barcelona"I suffered a perfectly planned mutilation, that of my language, and that's why I speak and write without any problem in Spanish. I don't regret mastering this language, but I can't ignore why I master it. If I write in Catalan, it's because I learned it on my own; nobody ever taught me; what's more, nobody ever speaks to me." With such forceful words—behind which one can sense long prior reflections—he expresses himself from time to time. Pedro Rovira (Vila-seca de Solcina, 1947) in his last and highly recommended diary, Life and Illusions (Proa, 2025). "If I had to bite my tongue in a book like this, I'd be better off not having written it," acknowledges the author, who has dedicated the last fifteen years, the most prolific of his career, to a threefold activity: that of making memories—through the cycle of diaries, inaugurated with Vermeer's Window (Proa, 2016) – that of continuing to cultivate poetry – with volumes such as The game of Venus (Proa, 2021)—and that of translating, with such outstanding projects as the one of The Flowers of Evil, of Charles Baudelaire (Proa, 2021).

Life and Illusions He chronicles the entire year of 2022, from January 1st, spent with his wife Celina, to December 31st, writing: "Life can be quite infuriating, but it always has a bright side; sometimes it shows it without hesitation, sometimes you have to go looking for it." One of the first infuriating moments is when he wants to change his name on his ID card. Going from Pedro to Pedro took him more than a month.

— Yes. On one of the visits to the police station, the officer unknowingly summoned Rimbaud. He told me that the documents I had submitted had to be sent to Madrid so they could verify that I wasn't "someone else."

This is not the only problem related to Catalan identity that he addresses in the book. He talks, for example, about the disappointment with the Independence Process.

— In the previous diary, Music and pulse [Proa, 2019], was more sugarcane worker Regarding the Process, like many people, I was deeply disillusioned. The politicians fell short. I never thought we'd ever get anywhere, but that didn't mean I didn't want to get involved.

He did it, didn't he?

— Yes. The only thing I got out of going to so many demonstrations was a hip operation. I suppose I would have had to go under the knife sooner or later, but the Process accelerated it.

Reading her diary, we worry a little about her health. She talks about the damage her bones are doing to her, about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease...

— The pain in my lungs comes from smoking a lot. Even though I quit almost twenty years ago, tobacco has left me with this chronic obstruction. But what bothers me most is the bone pain, which comes from osteoarthritis. I have terrible periods of it. There will come a time when I won't be able to move from my armchair. I'm fighting to prevent that from happening.

Life and Illusions He combines his present with memories of the past, where we see that decades ago he was constantly on the go.

— I used to be a very active person. Physically, I mean. I could walk for seven or eight hours straight in the mountains when I went hunting. Now, on the other hand, I get around with a walking stick, and that annoys me.

He also explains that he had a very active nightlife.

— I was a big night owl.

On New Year's Eve, he thinks of his first night with Celina, "embraced on the dance floor of a remote nightclub in Lleida."

— Luckily, I was a night owl back then, because otherwise we wouldn't have met. Celina has been and is the great love of my life. We go out a lot.

What did they find in this nightlife?

— We'd go out with friends, chat a lot, and drink too, because we were a generation that drank quite a bit, though less than the previous one. I remember very intimate conversations and gatherings with friends like Txema Martínez or Pere Pena. Sometimes they went on so long that we'd end up playing foosball in the early hours of the morning in a dive bar.

The book also features other friends of his, such as the painter Juan Vida, the musician Miguel Ríos, and the poet Joan Margarit.

— Joan and I were very close for years, and we used to meet in Montblanc, halfway between Barcelona and Lleida, where we both lived. He was always like an older brother to me. I miss him. He died in February 2021It was still the height of the pandemic, and we had to say goodbye over the phone. I still regret not being able to say goodbye in person.

They lived very close to the Sala Europa, in Lleida. Here he explains how, in 2022, it was about to be demolished.

— It was the iconic place of our youth. We'd go there to play pool, have a drink... The Sala Europa hosted many jazz concerts, and we organized presentations and recitals. Once I took something there Jaime Gil de BiedmaI had read him a lot, Jaime, and I even wrote two essays about his work.

For some years now, he has commented on Life and IllusionsThey settled in Alpicat and spend their summers in the Ebro Delta.

— We left Lleida around 2001 for two reasons: because there wasn't enough room for books at home and to put an end to the nightlife.

At that time he was still a professor at the University of Lleida, right?

— Yes. I was 54 when we left. Until then, I had published very little because university work is so all-consuming: classes are all over you day and night, and besides that, if you want to become a tenured professor, you have to spend years writing CVs, developing teaching proposals, and doing all sorts of other nonsense. Also, my father had died in 2000, and I thought I had to get my act together because I was now in the front line.

His father, in addition to inspiring the novel The Father's Wars (Proa, 2013), continues to appear often in diaries.

— My father taught me two fundamental things: how to hunt and how to be obedient. He was a very free man, both when he worked as a shepherd in Vila-seca de Solcina, the village where we lived, and later when he went into business thanks to tourism. He was also understanding and tolerant. He would have liked me to be an architect or a lawyer, but when I told him I wanted to study literature, he accepted it.

He still keeps his first shotgun in a corner of the studio. On the strap, which his father sewed almost seven decades ago, "you can still see the bloodstains of a chamerlin" they hunted "in a vineyard, tough and brave as a hawk."

— It's very powerful to share a passion for hunting with someone. It happened to me with my father, who was a horseman, and later with my father-in-law, who was a farmer. With both of them, I was able to have long and intimate conversations thanks to hunting. When my father-in-law first met me, he was afraid I was an intellectual, but he was immediately pleased to learn that I was a hunter.

It was also thanks to his father that he learned "the importance of dedicating time to what you do, because it's not about finishing it quickly, but doing it as well as possible."

— A writer, whether poet or storyteller, who doesn't dedicate time to what they do, is useless. My father instilled that in me. Once, the teacher told us that an inspector would be coming to the village school, and a few days before, he asked me to draw a tiger for him. I practiced at home, and each time I got faster at drawing it. Then I wanted to show my father how quickly I drew the tiger. He told me, "When you're examined, no one will look at whether you drew it quickly, but whether it's well done or not." This came from his background in crafts. It was more important to work well than quickly. In literature, you have people like Antonio Machado who think the same thing:Slowly and carefully, because doing things right matters more than just doing them."

Can hunting and writing be related?

— Hunting and writing are the same. With both, you need patience. And you must learn to hunt for your prey. My father has been my main literary influence.

In Life and Illusions The mother, who is approaching 100 years old, also appears.

— She made them last year. We threw her a party. I remember her drinking her glass of wine and having coffee... She ate more than me. She's strong, isn't she?

Is she still alive?

— This September her health took a turn for the worse and she passed away. My mother had a strong personality. She lived at home until the end, with a caregiver. She was a widow for 25 years. The early years were difficult because she was very close to her father, but she gradually recovered. Mom always did exactly what she wanted. Perhaps that's one of the secrets to longevity.

You are already 78.

— Yes. Despite my ailments, I'm doing well. I'm a very happy and fortunate person. I live with the person I love, my wife, and we get along very well. I've never had any conflicts with my children, which is quite unusual, isn't it? I have great faith in both of them, Pedro and Emilia. And the grandchildren seem to be doing well too.

He is also in the most prolific stage of his career.

— I've written more since I retired than in the rest of my life. I've been living as a professional writer for seventeen years now, and that's a blessing, because I don't have the anxieties of having to go it alone, without my pension. Then it would be a different story.

With The game of Venus (2021) surprised some readers: it was a book of erotic sonnets.

— It started as a joke. I'd write one and read it to my wife. They were a bit risqué. I felt comfortable and they just kept coming... I decided to write a whole book because Catalan poetry is rather chaste, especially when it's written by old men. You don't expect an old man to write erotic poetry, do you? The key toThe game of VenusWhat holds it together is that they are sonnets. One of the lessons I've learned from Baudelaire, a poet I've read a lot in recent years, is that the formal point of view can be an excuse to talk about things that are not at all formal. He did this in poems like The carrionFormally, Baudelaire is a classicBut when you look at what it says, you think, "Holy crap!"

The carrion He innovates when it comes to writing love poetry: he compares the remains of a dead animal to the woman the poet loves.

— Baudelaire wants to provoke an effect of repugnance in order to turn the usual mechanisms of amorous praise on their head.

In 2022 it was theFerrater YearHe dedicates several reflections to the poet.

— I went through a Ferrateria phase. He was like a guy you could relate to. But both he and Jaime Gil de Biedma were poets who only wrote three books. I've lost interest in that type of author.

Did they lose interest in you because they stopped writing?

— You have to be careful with these writers, especially when you're young, because if you start believing your own hype, you'll never write again. When they were still young, they convinced themselves they'd already seen it all. Gil de Biedma stopped writing, and Ferrater practically stopped living. He could have done so much more. They were left hanging.