Eduard Sola: "The concept of 'MILF' is disgusting"

The WhatsApp photo looks like his portrait, but in reality it is the cover of the illustrated book that adapts the short story about ambition How Much Land Does a Man Need?, by Tolstoy (Ediciones Ekaré). Eduard Sola has just debuted in the novel with The Nest (La Campana / Ediciones B) and has already delivered the script for House in Ashes, the sequel to the phenomenon Casa en flames, which earned him a Gaudí and a Goya. He has established himself as one of the most sought-after screenwriters in the national audiovisual industry (he is behind titles such as Ravalejar, La casa nostra, Mi amiga Eva, Querer, La virgen roja), but he says he still doesn't have a little boat or a house on the Costa Brava.

The acceptance speeches for the awards for Casa en flames turned you, perhaps unexpectedly, from an anonymous screenwriter into a public figure. How has it changed you?

— I am still deciding whether I should learn not to let what others say affect me or if I should learn to keep quiet. I don't know what to do. Avoiding this public space is complex. On one hand, I am progressive and, if they put a microphone in front of me, I prefer to use it with that political will. On the other hand, this comes at a price.

Self-censorship?

— Yes. Keeping silent seems to me a great resignation. I am very sorry that the violence of a few makes many keep silent, especially when it is people who are trying to make a better world for everyone. I am talking about politicians, about activists who give their lives to it, about the spokesperson for the Tenants' Union. I am sorry that they give up saying anything, because then it means that they win, and at the same time I understand it perfectly.

Are you worried about whether you will ever get rid of the "proud xarnego" label that you used when receiving the Gaudí award and which turned into a national debate?

— Yes, I suffer. I find the debate that was generated interesting about the concept of xarnego, but it seems unfair to me that I was the one taking the hits. And I am sorry that the focus of my speech was lost, which was against xenophobia, in favor of embracing diversity and in defense of the fact that we had done something well and we can do it well again.

You have been hired as an opinion columnist in various media. In a moment of a shift to the right, do you want to open up the game to the left? Do you feel like some kind of hero of wokeism?

— I don't want to be that person, I don't want to be anyone's hero. But what does wokism mean? If by wokism you mean progressive ideas, then you'll find me there. If woke is an insult to the progressive who lives in cloud cuckoo land, I hope I don't live in cloud cuckoo land. I am the first to have doubts and to assume that the world is very complex. It is surely easier to be apolitical, but I don't know if I know how to be.

Can politics be separated from culture?

— I suppose there are people who do it. I cannot renounce my view of the world, I cannot stop being myself in the scripts and in the novels. Can I stop being myself in the media sphere? I am thinking about it.

Let's talk about your debut novel. In El niu do you defend the revolutionary idea that mothers are people?

— I love it, yes, that's it. I think that sometimes we are left with an infantile idea of mothers, with the mythological and perfect being that feeds me and loves me very much. And we have to grow up. The mother can also be other things: she can be miserable, envious, beautiful things that perhaps you do not know...

And mothers f*ck too.

— Also. My friends always complain that, once they are mothers, the world interprets that their sexuality has disappeared. And no: these women continue to desire and want to be desired. But precisely because they are busy being perfect mothers, life crushes them. It seems perfect to me if they get off the bandwagon, but not because a man says so or because the system forces them to. The concept of MILF [mother I'd like to fuck] is disgusting, because you place the label of exception, of "even so, I want to fuck her". Buddy, stay home!

The other driving force of the book is guilt, which, when linked to parenting, I have only heard from women. Do you share that?

— All the time. I can't let go of the guilt of not doing it right. I think it has a lot to do with the fear that something might happen to them... I wish there were an external agency that would give you an analysis and say: "Look, you have an 8". I think that way I could let go of the guilt.

A paternity audit? But how horrible! And what if you do it poorly?

— Then I would get my act together. I hope they didn't say that... Maybe it's a bad idea, okay. But it is true that we haven't quite found the fit between parenting and personal growth. It's a pain, because the most fertile working years coincide with those of parenting, and it's an impossible combination. Even so, I believe we are learning from it, I believe feminism is leading us to a paradigm shift. We are the hinge generation.

For the moment, the freedom of children is still made of the renunciation of mothers.

— Absolutely. I celebrate that care is at the center of people's lives; it seems like the best plan to me, provided it is not an imposition. And until now, the world has decided that it should be them who had to make sacrifices. I am sorry, to be honest.

If you had to write the script of your life, what would be the driving force?

— I do not have a traumatic or foundational event. My children are, without a doubt, my before and after. Because they force me to be the person I want to be. I want to be the person who spends an hour swinging someone else. Because my natural self is to be productive all the time. That my children force me to spend every afternoon doing nothing, because I have committed to them, seems politically interesting to me and links to degrowth, which is an idea that I believe we must tend towards.

As much as the family is the place where you cannot wear masks, it is also a place full of secrets. What have you hidden under the dining room rug?

— In the family you play a role that is very complicated to change. Everything that is configured on the margins of this role is what is attempted to be hidden.

In your case, is the role that of the perfect only child?

— I have always been a diligent person. I regret having been such a good boy. Many things have come to me late and many things I haven't done. What is happening to me now? That I want to take drugs, because I have never done it. In the sexual sphere, I have also always been very proper. A few girlfriends, a few lovers, but everything very calm. And now I think that I wish I had had a more wild sex life. I miss having subscribed more to impulse. And now it doesn't happen anymore because I'm too lazy, or it happens halfway because life runs me over. It is lamentable.