"The conductor wouldn't let me off the train because he knew my sin."

"I know better what it costs to get on a tractor than to go up or down the subway stairs," he admits. Antoni PladevallBorn in Taradell in 1961, the author has continually explored "the psychology of characters who live surrounded by land, trees and irrigation ditches" in novels such as Rental properties (Column, 2006) and The black butterfly (Column, 2009). "From a young age, I was aware that I was just another figure in the landscape, and that the landscape, besides looking at me, was also looking at me," he recalls. A Doctor of Classical Philology, Pladevall was a high school teacher until four years ago. "I started in Berga, then moved to Torelló and Sabadell, and ended up in Vic," he says. "At one point, I could have taught in Taradell, but I resisted because I didn't want to run into a student's mother while I was queuing to buy bread, reproaching me for having failed her daughter."

It has taken 25 years since his debut as a novelist with The dirty slate (Galerada, 2001) until Pladevall finally dared to realize his initial desire: to publish a book of short stories. "I started out writing poetry, the most important workshop of the language, but my first novel was born from letting the stories I wrote run their course," he explains. "It was a friend who advised me against it." The recommendation had nothing to do with the quality of the work, but rather with its format. "The novel seemed to him a nobler goal," he continues. Five novels and a book of childhood memoirs later—the magnificent The day I turned eight (Column, 2014)–, Antoni Pladevall "closes the circle" with The fox will pass by tonight (Proa, 2026), which includes a dozen narratives written from The English key (Universe, 2020).

"The first story I wrote was Emergency braking, and I did it based on a chronicle by Tura Soler in The point Today "It was about a farmer furious with car races. Since they were scaring his livestock, he'd decided to block the road," he says. "The man had to go to court and claimed his tractor had stalled with the brush cutter blocking the road." In the story, the protagonist, Hilario de Valldeoriola, hatches a plan to stop the Legend Las Curvas rally stage that's supposed to pass in front of his land. "While the first driver gets out of his car and, without closing the door or even taking off his helmet, starts walking, his legs trembling and his eyes blurry, towards the machine that has suddenly appeared on the path to a possible victory, the second, paralyzed by fear, doesn't move, glued to the screen, and, overcome by helplessness, with his hands still gripping the steering wheel tightly, bursts into tears like a small child."

Defending oneself with humor

The author ofThe fox will pass by tonight He asserts that "one of the new elements in these stories, compared to his previous novels, is the kind and lighthearted perspective on events." Perhaps for this reason, the epigraph that heads the volume is... Pere CaldersAnd it reads: "Humor is a legitimate form of self-defense in the face of life." Antoni Pladevall's "ironic and sardonic gaze" permeates emotions such as "love's illusions and disillusionment, perplexity, disappointment, nostalgia, rage, humiliation, and swagger." In the story that gives the book its title, we see the shame of a boy who must prove that his father killed the fox in order to beg. Treatise on horticultureA mature man discovers a late-life pleasure that Pladevall himself also shares: tending his garden. "It's a way of reaffirming the importance of returning to the land, and also of admiring all that can be planted," he admits.

Two of the most autobiographical pieces in the collection are The ideal security guard and Seventeen pesetas"The first one addresses one of my weaknesses from my university days: bibliophilia," he recalls. "I reconstruct how I found the first translation of the..."Odyssey ofHomer written by Carles Riba and published in three volumes by Editorial Catalana in 1919." The title of the second piece refers to the price of a train ticket from Vic to Taradell-Montrodon in 1978. "When I was 17, the ticket cost 17 pesetas! It's the first time I've connected the two figures," the author states. The story's protagonist needs to get to Taradell after his last class of the day, a history of philosophy class, to work a few hours as a laborer at his father's cousin's company. Since the journey only takes five minutes, he decides to save himself the price of the ticket. "Shortly before arriving at Taradell station, I saw a navy blue uniform waiting for me outside," Antoni Pladevall recalls years later. "The conductor wouldn't let me off the train because he knew my sin."

The time frame covered by the stories ofThe fox will pass by tonight It begins in the late 70s with Seventeen pesetas And it goes up to 2019, just before the COVID pandemic. "As the son of tenant farmers, I've seen how, in fifty years, the traditional way of life has changed more than in several centuries," the author admits. "Many of the stories reflect the transformations and tensions of the contemporary rural world." Whenever there's a farmers' protest, Pladevall is clear about whose side he's on: "The farmers are always right, not only because their demands are just, but because they fill our tables with good food every day."