Andreu Martín: "The day they told me my military service was over, I cried."

BarcelonaJust over five years ago, Andreu Martín left Barcelona, ​​the city he had lived in since his birth in 1949, and settled in Sant Cugat del Vallès. Not even the idyllic calm of the street where he lives with his wife—the young neighbor downstairs "plays the piano like an angel," he assures—has managed to slow his creative pace. "There isn't a year that goes by that I don't publish a book," he admits. "If you want to make a living from writing and you haven't written a book, best-seller, you have to know something: you'll have to work hard."

That's what he's had to do. "With pleasure, because I haven't stopped telling stories since I was little," he says. Since he debuted in 1979 with Learn and be silent (Plaza & Janés), Spanish translation of Mute and in the cage, which had led, months ago, to Manuel de PedroloMartín has published more than 100 books. He predominantly writes detective novels, but has also dabbled in historical fiction, children's and young adult literature—with Jaume Ribera, he created Detective Flanagan, the protagonist of thirteen novels—and memoirs. "I've tried to retire, but I'm stuck for ideas.", he acknowledged this summer on the occasion of the publication of Everything was going well until now (Crims.cat, 2025), written jointly with Joan Miquel Capell. Martín, who This September he will receive the Catalan Book Week Lifetime Achievement Award., hasn't yet had time to add this latest novel to the bookshelf where he keeps all his work. On the top half, protected by glass, are all the titles he's "satisfied with." On the bottom half, hidden behind a door, are the "forgettable" ones.

He's such a prolific author that every time I see him, he presents a new book. Coinciding with the Lifetime Achievement Award, perhaps it's worth looking back...

— Since I learned to read and write at age 6, I haven't stopped. This summer, I thought that if I had a mental illness, it would be writing. I say this because it's so inevitable for me. I can't fight it. It's like a kind of addiction. When I was little, writing was my way of playing. There was a sense of refuge and escape in writing.

He grew up in the Left of the Eixample.

— It was on the Rue de la Model, at the corner of Rue du Ritz. Many people who have passed through one place have ended up in the other.

What do you find more attractive as a writer, Ritz or Model?

— The Model, without a doubt.

Perhaps that's why you ended up dedicating yourself to the crime genre, which you prefer to call police.

— There will be many reasons, and some I must be unaware of. One would be the influence of many novels in the collection. The Straw TailI was more sensitive to the plots in these novels than to the ones I took from my sister. But my love of detective stories goes way back: in Enid Blyton's young adult novels, there was always a mystery to be solved through investigation. My sense of humor has also been very present in almost everything I've written, and I'd say it comes, in part, from having read a lot of Richard Crompton.

I thought he would tell me that his love for novels about thieves and night watchmen came from an uncle of his who was a policeman.

— Uncle Manolo.

Once a year, Uncle Manolo showed him the pistols he had at home. I understand this impressed him greatly.

— Of course! Because they were real guns. They weren't like the ones we saw in the movies or the toy guns we were given. I remember as if it were yesterday when Uncle Manolo told my cousin Albert and me, because we were like brothers—we did everything together—to come with him to the office. There, he'd show us the guns. On some Sundays when Uncle Manolo was on guard at the police station, Dad would take us. Uncle Manolo would accompany us to the basement to see the inmates like someone showing off the beasts at the zoo.

The Barcelona he knew as a child would still have the characteristics of the post-war city.

— My father told me many stories from when he arrived in the 1920s. He was young, single, and a rowdy, and he experienced the Chinatown scene firsthand. It was the era of gunfighting, too... All of this ended up appearing in one of my favorite novels, Pompeya Cabaret (Ediciones 62, 2011). My father spoke to me about his youth, but also about things that were happening at the time and that were not reported in the newspapers or on the radio, such as the arrest of Quico SabatéNobody talked about the Maquis, but when we went to my mother's village, Arinyà, near Pobla de Segur, they were certainly present there.

I asked you about detective novels because it's the genre you've worked most frequently, but you had your first professional career as a comic book writer.

— Yes. When I entered college, I was already doing that. I learned to write thanks to the world of comics. I got into it purely by chance: from a young age, I wrote novels with my Olivetti typewriter and bound them, but I didn't let anyone read them, although, unbeknownst to me, my mother passed them on to some neighbors. Among them was Tunet Vila, a comic book artist and brother of the wife of the owner of the toy store where I worked during the Christmas holidays. When I was 14 or 15, one day when he came to the store, I asked him if he couldn't find me a job for the whole year: there wasn't much money at home, and I had to find money for my vices...

What did he say to her?

— That he couldn't give me because he was freelanceBut then he told me he'd read what I was writing—I blushed a lot here—and said I could be a good comic book writer. He put me in touch with a man who lived in Sants: he started commissioning me work.

You were studying psychology while also working. Why did you choose psychology?

— I was in the first class of students to graduate. You first studied philosophy and humanities for two years, and then you specialized. I studied psychology because I couldn't believe I could make a living writing. My parents always told me I didn't have sponsors and that I wouldn't make it.

But I was already making money writing scripts for comics: it was a first step toward professionalization.

— Yes, yes. I didn't realize I could make a living writing until I did my military service.

You made it in Ibiza, right?

— Yes, back in the early 1970s. In Ibiza, I had my office inside the barracks and spent all day writing. Thanks to my scripts, I could afford an apartment by the sea, eat at the restaurant every day, and even had enough to spend at the clubs on the weekends. I had a great life!

But he was doing his military service... Working on his own, he was breaking the law, wasn't he?

— The military barracks were rubbish, like a horrible Nazi concentration camp, but there was nothing to do all day except drills in the morning and gymnastics. You could leave whenever you wanted. No one could stop you. I made comics for BrugueraThe day they told me my military service was over, I cried. I ran around Ibiza, desperate because my privilege was coming to an end.

Back in Barcelona he continued to dedicate himself to comics through publishing houses such as Bruguera and Grijalbo. He wrote for Big Thumb, Mortadelo, The Viper...and later also for Thursday, Change 16, Penthouse and TimeWhy did you want to take the plunge into writing a novel?

— Mute and in the cage It was first a film script. I wrote it around 1975 or 1976, and it was meant for Jordi Bayona, whom I had met at Bruguera. We did heroic shoots in La Floresta. Mute and in the cage It was supposed to be a short film, but it didn't work out... The novel was first a script. In fact, all my books have a script first, in which I detail the story, the main characters, which ones become more important, and, above all, the ending. Before writing the first line, I have to have everything planned out.

Let's talk about Mute and in the cage, but for a long time we could only read the Spanish version, Learn and be silent, which Plaza & Janés published in 1979. What happened to the original version?

— When I had finished it in Catalan, I took it to Manuel de Pedrolo's house. My dream was for La Cola de Paja to publish it. I admired the collection, and Pedrolo was my greatest inspiration.

But it did not prosper.

— No. Pedrolo discouraged me. He told me he liked the novel, but that my Catalan was detestable. I suppose his reaction had in part to do with me invading his private home to bring him a book. Mute and in the cage It could not be read in Catalan until 1990, in La Magrana.

Pedrolo delayed his birth as a writer in Catalan for several years.

— I hadn't studied Catalan and I wrote it very badly, but I was determined to learn it. And I got serious when in Jaume Fuster, at a round table, proposed that I write a serial novel for theTodayWe knew each other from when we had done The Flutist's Altarpiece, where we had sung and danced together, and he was publishing serials at that time Under the sign of Sagittarius.

This book was Story of death (Laia, 1985). She soon continued exploring Catalan with two series of young adult novels: one co-written with JJ Sarto and the other with Jaume Ribera, which is familiar to hundreds of thousands of readers, starring Detective Flanagan.

— With the first Flanagan, Don't order sea bass out of season (1988), we won the National Prize for children's and young adult literature. When we sent Flanagan's books to The GranadaThe editor, Carles-Jordi Guardiola, returned the text to us with all the corrections in red. I was responsible for incorporating them into the original text, and in this way I learned where to place weak pronouns, improved sentence structures, corrected spelling mistakes, and so on. Along the way, I also saw the shameless and rude comments from the proofreader, who opined on my Catalan level: that's my job.

Since the late 1970s he has published more than a hundred books.

— There isn't a year that goes by without publishing a book. If you want to make a living from writing and haven't done any best-seller, you should know one thing: you will have to work hard.

Still, there have been times when he's struggled to make ends meet or pay his mortgage.

— In the early 90s, I had a crazy idea for a novel. I doubted it would ever come out well, but I needed the money urgently, so I presented the project to Anaya. It was during the time Flanagan was published in Spanish, and it worked out wonderfully. The book finally came out in 1993. It was called Vampire in spite of myselfIt's one of those I have on the bottom half of the shelf with all the work.

When he started publishing novels, the detective genre was going through a good period.

— The boom was in the late 70s, yes, partly thanks to Manuel Vazquez Montalbán. We were a generation fed up with French structuralism and incomprehensible, surrealist books. Montalbán ended up christening them "subnormal literature"... It was about escaping all that. Carvalho's series of novels did very well. Its success brought many people on board. The problem was that this boom lacked foundations and soon fizzled out. There were many dropouts. One of the most regrettable moments was when, in the 1990s, some publishers argued that specialized genre collections no longer made sense and published them in generalist collections.

You continued publishing in La Negra de La Magrana for a long time. And in 2012 you released Crimes.es, a collection—first linked to Al Revés, now to Clandestina—which already includes a dozen titles. Issue number 100 will be his.

— It's coming out next January. It's finished, but I can't tell you the title...

Crims.cat is one of the signs of the revitalization of the genre, which also boasts numerous festivals in Catalonia, including BCNegra.

— During the boom, we were all self-conscious; we had to defend ourselves and say that detective fiction was the best. And it's not true: it can be just as good as the rest. The latest wave of detective fiction began with the success of Henning Mankell. Here, Paco Camarasa He did a great job with the Negra y Criminal bookstore [2002-2015], the BCNegra festival [created in 2005], the Crímenes de Tinta award [2008-2019]... For some years now, many bookstores have a section with crime novels for anyone who wants to buy them. Those of us who write them are no better than the rest, but fortunately we are no longer relegated to the back corner.

Shortly before the pandemic, you moved from Barcelona to Sant Cugat. Do you miss the city where you've always lived?

— I feel a little sorry for the changes Barcelona is undergoing. I always go by train, but when I take my wife, Rosa Maria, to the train, I find many different things... and even the undeniable improvements worry me. I liked living in a city like Barcelona, ​​​​which had anticipated the future and had created the chamfered streets. It was a great idea when cars drove on the streets, but now that there are fewer and fewer, it no longer makes sense. The Barcelona of today is no longer mine. Years ago, when I spoke with the Paco González Ledesma, I had that same feeling when I mourned the loss of Chinatown. I had even known it, this neighborhood, when I played Boy Scout From Sant Pau del Camp: For a time, I used to babysit for the children of the neighborhood's leaf-eating children. When, before 1992, they expanded the neighborhood, it changed the appearance of part of the city, but I didn't experience it badly. At that time, we moved into the Olympic Village. We were doing well, but since it was a great triumph for Maragall and the Socialists, all the other parties dedicated themselves to torpedoing the project. With so much criticism, they devalued the place where we lived, but the mortgage remained sky-high.

In November he will be one of the Barcelona guests of the Guadalajara FairYou're publishing a novel in January. What other plans do you have for the future?

— I have many dance ideas. But something I'm really looking forward to is going around the world on a cruise with my wife. We're leaving in January of next year, and I'm going to take advantage of the trip to write a novel.

I hope it's not a novel...

— I'm afraid it will be. Someone will have to die to get the book started. Since I'll be working throughout the cruise, it will be the first trip I'll end up claiming as a tax deduction.