Conchi León: "I still struggle to understand forgiveness as a gift to oneself."

BarcelonaThe day her father suffered a heart attack, Mexican writer Conchi León (Mérida, 1973) began to write. From that urgent need emerged a text that delves into her childhood memories, marked by the brutal domestic violence perpetrated by her father and her inability to confront him as an adult. Young lionThe show, which premieres this Sunday in Girona as part of the Temporada Alta festival, delves into the artist's most intense memories, but without losing its sense of humor, observing his family with a critical yet tender eye and attempting to heal the deep wounds they inflicted.

The show speaks directly to his personal life, specifically his childhood. What was the writing process like?

— It was quite complex. It meant going back to childhood, a place so swampy and violated by my father and, to some extent, by my mother, since I had normalized the violence and sometimes even reproduced it myself. Those were rainy afternoons, sifting through memories to find a balance between the bad and the good. It also meant encountering that big-eyed girl who survived all of this and who can still tell the story with humor, a broken memory, and resilience.

Why did he decide to turn the violence perpetrated by his father into a play?

— Because fiction, at that moment, was the only space I had to reconnect with my father and forgive him. The urgency of his final days, coupled with my physical distance, left little room to heal our relationship. Writing became the means. This work is the journey I undertook to see him again and speak to him once more.

What was the most difficult part of the creation process?

— I stopped constantly judging myself, and I trusted the critique of a playwright friend because I believed it was a story worth telling, not just the voice of a resentful daughter who hadn't overcome childhood trauma. It was also very difficult for me to read the play to my mother and sister. I didn't want to hurt them; they're the people who matter most to me in that story.

The play focuses particularly on the role of the mother, who forgives her father everything. What idea about forgiveness did the author want to convey?

— Throughout my childhood, I repeatedly felt that my mother—after some beatings—had forgiven my father. Later, they asked her to forgive him so he could get out of jail—imagine the severity of the beating, to end up in jail. After a few days, his mother signed the pardon. All of this became ingrained in my young mind. I still struggle to understand forgiveness as a gift to oneself.

There are some very difficult situations, like when you were a child and were hit by a car, and your father decided to take you out of the hospital. But you recount it with humor. Why do you make this combination?

— Because I believe in what Molière said: "Let's make them laugh, let them open their mouths so we can give them the purge." Humor is a constant in my writing; it's also part of my heritage. My father had a wonderful sense of humor, and I suppose I learned it from him in some way. I think that difficult themes connect better with the audience if we give them moments of humor. I understand that some plays allow for it and others don't. In my case, since I act in the play and I'm also a cabaret performer, I like to add humor to the dramatic equation.

How do the family and the father remember now, after going through these experiences through the theater?

— As people who lived through circumstances that were normalized at the time, domestic violence wasn't unique to my family. My neighbors, my friends, even my teachers experienced it. My parents are dead, so I can only speak from memory, but my father was also an abused child, and my mother was an abandoned child. We were children who experienced both. I'm learning to look at them with tenderness, and I'm moving forward to heal all those memories through writing.