The day Eva Baltasar met the flesh and blood Boulder

Barcelona"I poked my head into the room and a sense of shame washed over me," Eva Baltasar confesses to me in the dressing rooms of the Teatre Texas, where she has taken refuge so as not to disturb the audience who are precisely here for a presentation... by Eva Baltasar. Before the event, the theater organized a Silent Reading Party to celebrate the premiere of the theatrical version of Permagel, adapted and directed by Victoria Szpunberg with Maria Rodríguez Soto as the protagonist. "Reading is usually a solitary and intimate act," says the author, but doing it in a group gives it a "somewhat cathedral-like, monastic, a sacred touch." Even her editor, Maria Bohigas, tiptoes into the room, where in the first row is the producer and partner of Texas, Anna Rosa Cisquella, engrossed in reading. Permagel will be Dagoll Dagom's last co-production; it wasn't Mar i cel.

Nearly a hundred people fill the theater's rows with one of Baltasar's latest books open. They don't look up, they don't talk. I count only fifteen men and five e-books

. It's impressive that not a single mobile phone rings, no coughs, nothing, just the muffled sound of air conditioning and an occasional relaxation chime. I also don't spot any young people posing for Instagram. Among the audience are fans of Baltasar and regulars of reading clubs. The theater managers had the idea of "crossing audiences" with Club Editor, as they call it in marketing jargon, and it worked. Sara and Judit already have tickets for the theater and have read all of Baltasar. They came because "it's like going to study at the library, you're more focused, for longer, and there's an atmosphere." Víctor, on the other hand, expected the event to be more relaxed: "I came to talk about books," he admits.

The screenwriter and director Leticia Dolera will certainly talk about it, who will try to extract the essence of Baltasar's work like those woodcutters who make sculptures from a trunk with a chainsaw. The author does not allow herself to be psychoanalyzed in interviews, because she says that for that she invents stories: "I realize who I am when I write." In fact, she saw that she had a novel in her hands when she was writing a diary on the advice of a psychologist and began to put more fiction than reality into it. When she saw that she could not sustain so many lies in the consultation, and it also cost her money, she stopped therapy and used her protagonists to "go looking for monsters." Writing allows her to "connect with emotions that we have repressed, such as violence or cruelty"; "that way I no longer need to go around the world killing people".

Wishes and not memories

It's fascinating how Baltasar explains her creation process. "I want to meet someone who seduces me. I need surprise. The character guides me: today I discovered she has a sister, today she has been a whore, wow! —she explains—. If I could, I wouldn't leave my novels". If she had to choose, she would like to enter Mamut again. But who she fell in love with was Boulder, one of the protagonists of the homonymous novel. "She is the love of my life. She is like an ex of mine. I even felt a sense of infidelity with my partner". She assures that it was so real that one evening, in Portugal, she saw Boulder on a ferry wearing a sailor's jacket, hugging a woman, and she followed them until she lost sight of them. "I didn't say anything to her, I didn't say: 'Hey, I'm your author!'", she recalls.

There isn't much oxygen left to dedicate to the most recent novel, Peixos, but Baltasar celebrates having discovered that she can cancel the past. "I hate my past. We give it too much importance. I wish it hadn't existed". And it's the luxury she gives to many of her characters, who carry not burdens but desires. One of her desires is to turn around this "splendid society we live in", she says ironically. She explained it in "Ocàs i fascinació": "You don't need to go looking for spirituality anywhere, you don't need to go to temples, nor look for masters, but rather discover what it is that already sustains us. God, and I say God due to my tradition but you understand, God is in you. The most difficult journey is to turn around within yourself".

What gives her hope?, Dolera asks her. "Having daughters has given me hope. And always putting writing first. I have never been married to any job, even though Permagel wasn't published until I was 40. But I knew I had to write. What matters to me in life? The few people I love, writing, and accompanying the people by my side well. And not much else".