Gemma Ruiz Palà: "The clitoris doesn't age: female sexual activity ends if you want it to."

BarcelonaGemma Ruiz (Sabadell, 1975) returns to bookstores two years after the successful novel Our mothers, with which he received the Sant Jordi award. And he does so with A woman your age (Proa), a story about family, sex, art, friendship, and touristification in which artist Kate Gold decides to break away from everything and take back control of her life, her vocation, her independence, and her self-love.

A novel that begins with a nail. That's going strong.

— I wanted to highlight one of the novel's themes, which is to highlight that female sexual activity ends if you want it to, but biologically it never ends. Because the clitoris is an organ that doesn't age. This kind of deception or llufa that has been placed on us, that women, when we age, that's it It's a lie. Women are sexually active at that age and beyond, and they're not represented. I wanted to start by saying: yes, that's true.

"To be having sex like never before in your life and have it ruined by a hottie is a real pain." coitus interruptus due to menopause it has certainly been seen little.

— Menopause, in all spheres of life, including sex, is taboo. We're now able to pronounce the word. And it's quite absurd, because it's a stage of life that half of humanity will experience, each in their own way; not everyone has the same symptoms. But until now, fiction hasn't addressed it: it's either been stereotyped in a caricaturing, anecdotal way, or it's simply been avoided. Many people are saying this, actresses like Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, Emma Vilarasau, who has won all the awards with this speechCinema has taught us how to fall in love, how to love, how to move from adolescence to youth, from youth to maturity... Can cinema, please, teach us that there is an old age that isn't what we've been told awaited us, that it was something horrible? I've written the Hollywood character I'd like to see more often.

Not only do women suffer the symptoms of menopause, but they also have the burden of not being noticed.

— We already know that all the health problems affecting women are understudied and underfunded by public funds to alleviate their symptoms, but on top of that, menopause is linked to aging. We've been led to believe that when we lose sexual capital, beauty, slimness, and youth, we're no longer good for anything. But in book clubs, I see women ten, fifteen, twenty years older than me with a level of vitality! This imbalance between how women are experiencing old age today—in the privileged Western world, where they can have their pay and the good health to live it—and how the world represents them caught my attention.

You talk about a second half of life. When does it come?

— There are many turning points. Some people experience the second half of their life at 33, when they decide on a major life change, which could be in their personal life, a move to another country, or a new partner. Others experience it at 60. It's a broad spectrum. There used to be a lot of talk about the midlife crisis, but all that has changed. So it's likely to start around age 50, but it's also very common for it to come earlier.

We would have defined Kate Gold, first of all, as the wife of the great professor. Secondly, as a mother. Until the moment comes when she wants to be the protagonist of her life, to resume her studies, to be alone. But this comes at a price.

— Women, especially, are severely penalized for doing their own thing, because the social mandate is "everything but you," and what you want to do, and how you want to unfold, is always secondary, or you have to do everything at once and try not to die trying, excuse the redundancy. Women who prioritize themselves and say, "The children are grown, my man can do his thing, now it's my turn," are severely penalized, and fiction has also penalized them. Whenever there's a movement like this, there's some tragedy or some punishment, from the Greeks to contemporary cinema, and that's why I liked that she had problems like everyone else, but that there wasn't that tragedy that always crushes the protagonist who decides to stray from her path. Man, that's enough, right?

Is the limit, for many women, the fear of losing their children?

— Yes, it's the carrot that has prevented many women from having a breakup. Although it hasn't prevented others: I think of The abandoners by Begoña Gómez Urzaiz, which explains all the artists who, to make their living at that point in their lives, had to leave their children behind. This has a social cost, because that stigma always exists. My protagonist goes through the process of learning to peel off all these scabs of social mandates that we naturalize and swallow.

The protagonist is a visual artist from New York, and the novel takes place over seven days in Venice. These are places where you've done writing residencies, right?

Yes. I've been to Venice many times, to the Art Biennale. I'd always imagined the protagonist to be American, probably because of the sentimental upbringing we received, and I wanted to place her in these intellectual circles. Therefore, she had to be from New York, a city I go to very often and know very well, and where I've also had a scholarship to be. And then I wanted to place her outside the United States so she could unfold, break out of that bubble, that status. And by giving her Italian origins, I wanted to reconnect her with the expressive side of that character, who was a bit stuck. Furthermore, Venice, for me, is a place that catalyzes all the inconsistencies and all the challenges of our world, of people who live in cities. It's the canary in the mine in terms of mass tourism; it's the place where every year there's an Art Biennale with conscious art, but where these same artists arrive on a private jet that pollutes ten times more. It's a place that holds up a mirror to us to see the contradictions on foot that we all are. And it also allowed me to break down the romantic stereotype of the city, but at the same time, feel completely captivated. Because... whoever leaves Venice unscathed, tell me about it!

A Venice swallowed up by tourism: you say that more Italians live in Barcelona than Venetians in Venice.

— In the 1960s, Venice had 175,000 inhabitants, and now there are fewer than 49,000. It's an extreme situation, but it's where we're headed. In fact, the entire anti-tourism movement and the warning about the impact of cruise ship passengers in Barcelona are based on their studies and their work for over 25 years in Venice. There's nothing we can do against the tourist lobbies, but at least they've raised their voices, and we've had a role model who has told us to "be careful." Even if we're heading towards the precipice anyway, at least we'll be informed.

Fiction is increasingly portraying this self-sacrificing woman who realizes that you only live once. House on fire and in My friend Eva, in the cinema. Now, Director Cesc Gay told ARA"Men separate and we have thirty-year-old women waiting for us, but not them. Men in their 25s or 30s don't even look at them, or they just give them a finger and say goodbye." There are cases like that of the writer Annie Ernaux, but they're not common.

— It happens more than we know, because it's hidden. It's the novel's other taboo. There are many people who have experienced intergenerational relationships that are the opposite of what cinema has normalized, because when there's a relationship between an old man and a young woman, it's not even the subject of a film.

Here I saw the optimism of the will against female ageism...

— No. I have relied more on conversations and confessions that have been made to me than on an intention to create reality.

In the narrator's literary voice, there is an empowering, optimistic, and confident will. Is it meant to shock the reader?

— I thought: if now, approaching fifty, you feel so much more confident, less prejudiced, and less self-conscious than when you were 25, imagine us all at 65 or 70. Experience and age don't just tell you wrinkles; they tell you a lot, they add a lot to us, they add optimism, they add optimism. I had to let go of all the little things that have made our lives miserable.

It's a literary artifact written in the first person, which spans seven days. I don't know if you saw it turned into a movie.

— Yes, I've written a book, but for me it's a movie. It's the first time something so clear has happened to me. I imagined him with the baggage of all that emotional education we all carry, saying, "Look, now I'm going to burn this baggage and tell my life story." The first person is very grateful for finding this voice in their ear, for having the hope that people will see them in the flesh, for giving them a voice, but it also involves a difficulty. It's a happy idea, but then you have to build it.

This is also the story of passion. Two people who meet by chance and connect. Can you be both a feminist and a romantic?

— I also wanted to play this with humor. Let's see if now, for a moment of weakness, we'll lose here... Now I'd really give her a hard time, but of course, I'm going to fall apart, right? Now, she couldn't go back and stand behind a man in the constellation of her life.

The Venice Art Biennale is the setting for the book. It serves as a reflection on how art made by women has been considered second-class, statuettes in diminutive, craftsmanship.

— Louise Bourgeois, who is surely the most important artist of the 20th century, was only recently started to be listened to when she was already using a cane. an award at the Fina MirallesHallelujah! But we don't have Fina Miralles in our ABCs of important contemporary Catalan artists. The art world remains a reflection of the patriarchal gaze above all. Paradoxically, when you encounter these artists, you see how necessary they are, because they are the mirrors you seek. If art has something that accompanies you in life, it tells you and looks at you, when they don't make art, no one is looking at you. They keep it hidden from you because those who do are like you! I liked to emphasize this because it's being talked about more and more, but it's very volatile: one year a central exhibition is dedicated to them, but the next year you don't find them. Few creators of a certain age are in the honored and central position in the art world.

You also take advantage of it to pay tribute to our Anna Pérez Pagès.

— With Anna, every book was also a celebration we made, a celebration we shared. I thought I wouldn't be here with this book, and I had to be. I imagined Anna's face breaking at being here, and my heart swelled.

Kate is an artist who finds support in a younger collective, La Colla de la Brossa, lis brucesAre you hopeful that young people have changed, given that polls show they're more conservative and anti-feminist?

— Yes, there are some who are, but there is also a part that is way ahead of us. I have absolute confidence in young people. Yes, there is a part of reaction that knows how to do it very well to reach young people, especially men, through social media, and there is also a part of returning to tradition with girls, but there is also a large mass of young girls and boys who are seeing things differently, and I trust them 100%. They are deconstructing the things that, deep down, sustain the patriarchy. I think it's impossible to go back. Look at the Berta Prieto at the Beckett Room: I just want to applaud them, follow them and learn from them.

Feminism, female protagonists, and especially their taboos and disdain are the thread that unites your novels. What do you write about?

— Against an idea of the world we'd all swallowed, and you see it's not like that. Against this straitjacket they've put on us just because we're women. Everything is conceived from a perspective that doesn't favor you: from those who study science to those who favor street lighting. Everything is. It's like practically rewriting reality, because we've swallowed it in a way that you later realize doesn't fit.

And once you start, there's no turning back.

— You're trained with the great universal references, or the greatest ones you've had access to, and that has shaped you, but then you have to refute them and put them in their place and contextualize them, and go find the part they haven't told you. And when you go looking for all the artists, thinkers, academics, it rewrites itself. You have to gather the work you've done and write another story. It's access to the narrative: whoever holds the reins of the narrative can change things. Perception, certainly. Hierarchy too. This is what happens to me, and I think it happens to many of us.

It's been nine years since you published your first novel, ArgelagasWas that the beginning of Gemma Part II? Perhaps it all began at the Venice Biennale?

— Gosh, I hadn't thought about it, but maybe yes, it's very strong. Completely unconscious. Maybe yes with Argelagas Gemma Second Half began.

It's been two years since you temporarily left TV3 to pursue writing. It's a new life.

— Absolutely, and even more so now, when I'm living abroad a lot, as much as I can, with residencies and scholarships. It's a completely different life.

Can you live like a Catalan writer?

— It's difficult if you have a mortgage to pay and you don't come back as often as it happened with Our mothersHe gave me this pad so I could quit my job, but you have to keep repeating that success, and it's certainly a pressure; it's not that easy, you never know. If you don't have very high sales, making a living from writing is very difficult.

Your books have been translated into Spanish (Consonni) and Italian. This fall, you'll be traveling to the Guadalajara International Book Fair with the Catalan delegation, with Barcelona as your guest city.

— I was at the Buenos Aires fair last year, but this is the first time I'll be going with the Catalan delegation, and I'm really excited. It's great to be able to go to the other side of the world and have people want to hear about what we're doing here in Barcelona.