Ramon Mas: "The wounds we carry are what make us different from others"

BarcelonaOne random morning, the universe sets a trap for Nofre Canadell, and when he comes to, still dazed and with the word spricka tattooed on his thigh, he gets in touch with his wife and children and realizes that, without knowing how, fifteen years have passed. "His life will never be the same again –anticipates Ramon Mas (Sant Julià de Vilatorta, 1982), who this September publishes the novel Sempre és massa tard (L'Altra)–. I have been turning this story over in my mind for a long time. I must have had the first idea seven or eight years ago. It revolved around a father who could not regain contact with his children or his wife after falling into a temporal rift".

Starting from this premise, Mas has worked the story thoroughly to try to offer the point of view of the four members of the family and also of some characters who end up having a relationship with them. This is the case of David, Nofre's former partner, Adela, linked to the hospice where the protagonist ends up, and Agda, a young Swedish woman who loves electronic music and makes a discovery that is decisive in the resolution of the plot, and which generates an urban legend that obsesses the lost man for a long time. "I grew up in Osona during the 80s and 90s, and as a teenager I was fascinated by urban legends –he recalls–. One of the most popular was the one about the girl who had died in a car accident and who would reappear on the same bend on stormy nights. In every town the story was a bit different. It was terrifyingly scary. The older ones would tell it to you and you would end up repeating it to the little ones".

Installed for a few years now in a municipality in Montseny, Mas has been taking stock of his formative years spent in Vic. "If I hadn't left, I wouldn't be writing books like this one or like Els murs invisibles[L'Altra, 2024]", he assures. If there he converted into narrative material the three weeks that separated the first suicide attempt of a friend of his, Raül, from the second and final one, in Sempre és massa tard he wanted to distance himself from his personal experiences, even though he sets the novel in the Osona capital and dedicates it to two recent losses, that of his mother and that of Jordi Sanglas, friend and author of the novel 100.000 candeles (Males Herbes, 2013). "The wounds we carry are what make us different from others –says Mas–. All the characters in Sempre és massa tard are quite broken and carry a drama. Each one, however, lives it in their own way".

Nofre has to struggle to move forward despite the despair of having been left alone. His former family, consisting of Naima and their two children, Mireia and Ahmed, metabolize the father's absence with varying degrees of resentment, sadness, and guilt. "At first, Nofre believes he can rebuild the bond with his wife and children and sets out to achieve it, but without intending to, he destroys the family," he advances. Although Naima has partnered again with a good man, Pere, she has hidden from the children that he is not their father, and this lie will take its toll. "The emotions of one and all are confusing; the reader can intuit them, although at no point do I make them evident," says Mas. "One of the most important conversations in the book, between Mireia and Naima, is full of implications and half-said things. I know many families that function like this."

The price of avoiding parenting

The figure who comes off worst in the novel is that of the father, a man who disappears without knowing why, even though up until the moment he vanished he had barely been involved in raising his children. "Nofre is a pusillanimous man. He is a man who just drifts through life. He is not capable of facing problems," the author comments. "If Sempre és massa tard were a Greek tragedy, he would be a puppet of fate. In the end, however, after many vicissitudes, he will make the decision to act."

Mas has written an intimate drama with touches of science fiction that is read with the avidity of a thriller. As the years go by, in the city of Vic in the novel, presided over by an enormous slaughterhouse, living conditions worsen due to high temperatures. The worst drug in the society the author describes is not snorted, nor injected, nor drunk, but rather consumed through screens. "Addiction to fiction is already part of our world," he admits. "There are more and more people who have the need to be constantly entertained, whether it be through series, movies, podcasts, or social networks." Literature would remain on the sidelines of this disconnection that many users pursue, because it requires active participation on the part of the reader. "The idea of living hooked on fiction comes to me from a story that occurred to me years ago," says Mas. "The protagonist was a very old man whose body was falling apart, but who, thanks to connecting to another reality through a headset, can once again make his life worth living."

In 2012, the same year that Ramon Mas founded the publishing house Males Herbes with Ricard Planas, he debuted with the short novel Crònica d'un delicte menor (L'Albí). Since then, he has balanced his work at the publishing house—specializing in non-realistic genres, from fantasy to horror, science fiction, and satire—with literary creation. Sempre és massa tard arrives a few months after the essay Un llibre per parlar amb fantasmes (Males Herbes, 2026). "The main idea is antagonistic to that of the stages of grief," argues Mas. "After the initial pain, I don't believe you should leave the person who is no longer here behind. We must accept that they still accompany us and learn to communicate with them. There are many cultures that experience death with much more naturalness than ours. The dead have a plate at the table. Here, we lock them in a cemetery and go to see them once a year. The dead don't need a place to manifest themselves, because the place is yourself, and it depends on how you live it for them to be able to return with more or less frequency."