Carlota Gurt: "I saw that desolate landscape and I thought: 'I am like this, dry'"

BarcelonaHow can the life of a stranger with whom you've only exchanged a glance change you? Carlota Gurt's (Barcelona, 1976) second novel, Los páramos, which won the last Anagram Books prize, is the story of Ramona and Fausto, two people who apparently have no common ground and have lost all hope. Through a fleeting encounter at the Parador de Sau, Gurt constructs a solid and vibrant narrative about how these characters inhabit disillusionment. With a fabulous display of metaphors and robust Catalan, the novel moves back and forth between two very confined moments in time —the eves of Christmas and Saint John's Day—, with a narrative structure that makes it shine.

With Los páramosyou entered the Anagram Books prize. Until now, you had published with Proa, and winning it meant a change of publisher. Why did you do it?

— It had been a while since I felt comfortable with the type of literature they push from Planeta, although some of their books are fantastic. I had the feeling that my natural place wasn't there, that perhaps my natural audience wasn't there. I thought a lot, because leaving Planeta means abandoning the checkbook. I spoke with my agent and it seemed to me that Anagrama was a good place. They publish books in Catalan that are very good and they take risks.

This novel is precisely risky. It starts from the end and makes it clear from the outset that it is neither about love nor sex. Why was it important to establish that foundation from the beginning?

— Because when we read we always elaborate hypotheses about what we are reading. When you have a female character and a male character, your head immediately thinks there will be some trouble. I wanted to deactivate it from the start so that there would be no such misunderstanding. When you start a novel, as a writer you make a promise that the reader interprets. If they interpreted that this would be a love story, the novel would have been a disappointment.

Why did the protagonists have to be two strangers?

— Because I wanted it to seem like an impossible, quite implausible encounter. When we read, we always need some question that drives us forward. That's why I start with a very brief dialogue, so that the reader thinks: "How have these two people come to have this conversation?" It seems they must confess everything to each other, but deep down they don't know each other. There is also the idea that, sometimes, the things that save you are in the most unexpected places.

You describe Ramona as "a sharp woman", and Fausto is "a wind fritter". What is it about these characters that made you turn them into the protagonists of the story?

— I went to Sau by chance and decided to write about droughts. Engineering works are great metaphors for many things, and it seemed to me that I could have a character who was the head of the dam. I wanted the other to be the opposite. In fact, both have been built in opposition and similarity, because in some things they are absolutely identical.

Bodies are very present throughout history. We find "a curvaceous woman", "a rubber man", "a dressed-up turnip". Why do you emphasize the characters' physique?

— Metaphor and symbol sometimes lose me a bit, but I wanted to have an obese person because of the idea that the body and life weigh them down too much. If Faust was fat, Ramona had to be almost anorexic. Our identity is our body and our name. If I had another body, I would be another person, and what people see in me derives, in part, from my body. In another life I would like to be a fragile and small woman, who weighs 50 kilos. It must be very liberating. But the body is a calling card that you don't choose, and that conditions the reading that others make of you.

And it also greatly conditions the intimacy of the protagonists. Fausto can't stand being overweight, or not seeing his penis when he masturbates because of his belly.

— It's that idea of not feeling man enough. In the end, we talk a lot about the oppressions of women, but men also live very oppressed by patriarchy. They are projected to be a certain way and, on occasion, feeling less macho affects them especially. For example, with baldness. Women are not very concerned about men's baldness, they are more concerned about themselves. Or the size of their genitals.

Both have several crises: with their work, with their partner, with their future. Why did you make those inner conflicts the heartbeat of the story?

— The idea was born one day when I went to Sau. I was writing another novel that wasn't progressing. Suddenly I saw that desolate landscape and thought: 'I'm like this, dry.' It doesn't grow here anymore. It's a question I often ask myself. Where does joy come from, how is it born? I wanted to tell about that lack of enthusiasm, which doesn't come from a great drama, but from inertia. You have a job you don't like, a partner you don't either... In the end, enthusiasm is the ability to invent it, to believe in a hopeful future.

But Ramona has "bet on fiction", which would be a way out.

— We all spend the day watching series, retouched screens. We consume many fictions to escape the truth. I liked one character to be devoted to fictions, a lover of movies, and the other the complete opposite. The novel talks a lot about our psychological mechanisms for escape: self-deception, victimhood, compulsive behaviors, avoidant behaviors…

One of Ramona's big problems is with Greta, who has been her partner for three years. About their relationship, you write: "Love is also a noise, you enter captivated by the landscape and then, when you want to leave, you don't know how to do it". Is love a trap?

— Falling in love is the great fiction, the fiction of the other, a kind of state of intoxication. Falling in love is seeing in another a kind of promised land. When you arrive, sometimes it is the promised land and sometimes it is not. And getting out of there is difficult, because everything is tangled, within a spiderweb.

The novel is built on alternating chapters. In some we find Ramona's account on Christmas Eve at the Parador de Sau. In others, Fausto travels by train from Madrid to Barcelona just before San Juan. Why did you choose this structure?

— They are two separate stories but at the same time they are together, contaminated. Until now I had not had two narrators in a novel. This allowed me to surf the fact that action is relative. You are with one and immediately you pass to the other, it is a matter of rhythm. I wanted the temporal arc to be very clear by having them very limited.

Why do you set part of the story on Christmas Day?

— Because it creates a very particular atmosphere in the Parador, and because they are symbolic dates. When you are alone on a special day, something surely happens. There is something strange about being alone on New Year's Eve, on Christmas, or on your birthday, even if it doesn't matter to you. The fact that it is that date makes everything magnify more, take on importance.

The protagonists' context is not optimistic either. You portray the decline of Catalan, the impact of climate change... Do you see the present with hopelessness?

— It is a book about individual and collective droughts. The drought we experienced a couple of years ago was almost a symbol of the country, of the feeling that it is somewhat dead, that we are all dragging ourselves along. And then there is the idea that Barcelona is dry, that with the invasion of the expats they are squeezing us all, that the natural inhabitants of the city are being expelled because of that tourist servility of the city. And there is also intellectual drought. We are all zombified, for many hours a day we have contact with reality through a screen. It is quite disturbing.

Fausto is the dam manager, and as such he must face a series of situations in the reservoir. How did you research to write the most technical part?

— I could have invented it and nothing would have happened, but when I write, I always try to find out how things are. I spoke with Sergi Morilla, the head of the Sau dam. He showed it to me from the inside and told me many things. I also spoke with a meteorologist to find out if it was plausible that there was so much fog in the reservoir and if it was plausible that there was a dry storm that affected a train. And then I went to spend a Christmas at the Parador to see what it was like. I thought it would be empty, and instead, it was full. I also made the Madrid-Barcelona journey by train, taking notes, and I went by car to Los Monegros, to the place where the train stops. I like to observe reality with literary eyes and then portray it.

Ramona is presenting a podcast and has committed to publishing an essay, but she doesn't feel like it at all. At one point in the novel, she wonders: "How do you write a book you don't feel like writing?". Have you ever written a book without enthusiasm?

— Generally, when I write a book, I do it because I feel like it. I was writing another one that I abandoned, not for lack of enthusiasm but for a feeling of lack of ability.

Are you excited about Saint George?

— Nothing. I have the feeling of being a kind of decoration, people pass by and look at you as if you were in the zoo. It's very nice to have the street full of books, but it's a day that writers spend rather alone, even if someone from the publishing house accompanies us. We go up and down from one place to another to sign four books and end up very tired. I always have the feeling that people suck me, I end the day empty and with a very discouraging feeling. What I would like is to be put in a bar from ten to two. Since I won't have queues of 200 people, people can come, sit down and we can chat. This would be nice and fun.