Stefanie Kremser: "The grief of losing an apartment is immense, and I still haven't gotten over it."

Barcelona"Perhaps we write to remember, but above all we remember to write," we read in Acció de gràcies for a house, the new and highly recommended book by Stefanie KremserPublished by Edicions de 1984, this is the first book written in Catalan by the author, born in Düsseldorf, raised in São Paulo, and a resident of Barcelona for over two decades. Kremser draws on the recent and traumatic memory of having to leave the apartment on Princesa Street where she lived with her husband, the writer Jordi Puntí, to reflect on the importance of having a place to live and taking care of it, whether modest or luxurious, and how a city like the Catalan capital makes it increasingly difficult for its inhabitants to do so.

Although, from Postcard of Copacabana (Club Editor, 2007), we have always been able to read each new book of yours in Catalan, with Acció de gràcies for a house You're making your debut as an author in this language. Is this a one-off foray or the start of a new creative phase?

— My intention is to continue writing in Catalan, as long as I have a more or less feasible idea.

You found your literary voice in Catalan after turning fifty.

— I've lived in Barcelona since 2003, and my home language is Catalan. It's taken me many years to start writing. I thought I had to wait for the right moment... I'd say I've taken the plunge because Acció de gràcies for a house It's a non-fiction book. To dare to write a novel in Catalan, I would need a different kind of linguistic memory, one I don't know if I'll ever possess. In any case, this book represents my return to Romance languages ​​after two short stories I wrote for anthologies and an epilogue for the latest edition of...The Carrer de les Camèlies, by Mercè Rodoreda.

Did you start writing in Portuguese?

— Yes. I lived in Brazil until I was 20, and I wrote my first silly things in Portuguese. As a young man, my vocabulary was mostly in that language. I had to learn German with more effort: I had to adapt it, and to some extent, it was new to me when I went to Munich to study documentary filmmaking. All the books and scripts that I wrote before Acció de gràcies for a house They have been in German.

Even so, Si aquest carrer fos meu (Ediciones de 1984, 2020), which you wrote in German, has never been read in German, has it? It was a memoir in which, through the more than twenty houses where you had lived up to that point – in Europe, North America and South America – you questioned the "constant formation and reformation" of your identity.

— I would say that it was with that book that my definitive change towards Catalan began. Si aquest fos meu It wasn't published in Germany because my editors were taken aback by my change of genre. It's as if, for the German market, I could only write fiction. I needed to do something different from what I had done up to that point. It was wonderful to be able to publish that book in Catalan. When I started thinking about Acció de gràcies for a houseWhat convinced me to try my luck in this language was that it could build a bridge between Brazil and Catalonia. On the one hand, there was Severina's monologue in Portuguese, who works as a domestic worker in São Paulo and tells me about her life in the book's final chapter, and on the other hand, there were my experiences here, which have been and are written in Catalan. It was a way to turn the page and stop being a German writer.

In Acció de gràcies for a house We found this phrase: "Perhaps we write to remember, but above all we remember to write." Memories have long held significant weight in your narrative work. Why?

— This happens in both fiction and nonfiction, but for different reasons. In fiction, remembering is important for me to be believable. Until now, I haven't been able to invent things that didn't stem from a life experience that I can then transform. I have to write about things I know to work with more confidence. This applies to both landscapes and the psychologies of the characters.

And in your non-fiction, why are memories important?

— In a book like Acció de gràcies for a houseThe essay blends with a personal perspective. If that perspective is present, I need the memory, whether distant—from childhood or adolescence—or more recent. I'm not an academic intellectual. I come from the world of film. When I write nonfiction, I need this autobiographical element as a guiding thread.

Acció de gràcies for a house is connected with Si aquest carrer fos meu Because both delve into the importance of home. While in your first piece, the shaping of a changing identity was crucial depending on where you lived, the starting point here is different. Instead of leaving a place because you want to, in this case you have to leave because you lose your apartment.

— The previous book ended in 2011, when we moved into the apartment on Princesa Street after almost a decade in two other apartments, on Roger de Flor and on Passeig de Sant Joan. I finished it before the pandemic, at a time when I was thinking that perhaps one day, in a future I imagined to be far off, we should leave.

That wasn't the case.

— No. I had begun writing about the relationship between women and the home based on the personal history of...

She asked you to turn her story into a book so that she could eventually have a home.

— And I told her that you couldn't buy a house with the profits from a book. But we reached an agreement: if I wrote her life story, I would give her 25% of the royalties I received.

Will you do it?

— Yes. When I receive the first payment, I will deposit the money due to her, although I will have to do it through a friend of hers, because Severina doesn't have a bank account.

Returning to your personal situation, as you began to shape Acció de gràcies for a houseThe owner of the apartment where you lived with Jordi died, and that changed the rules of the game.

— We'd lived in that apartment for over a decade and were very happy. It was a privilege to live there. For the first time in decades, I was quite content with a settled life. I'd lived at more than twenty different addresses in various countries. When the owner who lived on the main floor died, his heirs appeared. None of the neighbors knew what they would do. They decided to sell the entire building without notifying anyone, and to a very aggressive investment fund.

You weren't expecting that.

— Despite the uncertainty of the moment, we had hope. Or perhaps it wasn't exactly hope, but rather disbelief that something like this could happen. That bad news came to us at a very difficult age. We were both over 50 and self-employed. We were too old to take out a mortgage, and at first we resisted having to dip into the savings we had set aside for when we were older. But in the current situation in Barcelona, ​​we ended up being forced to buy. It's ridiculous that a childless couple like us has to end up buying an apartment if we want to stay in the city.

You ended up being victims of the gentrification that already appeared in one of your previous novels, Carrer dels Oblidats (Empúries, 2012).

— It was as if our lives had entered the nightmare of that novel, which dealt with gentrification and real estate bullying. It pains me to see that, since it came out Carrer dels Oblidats Until 2023, when all of this was happening to us, real estate violence in Barcelona had worsened.

The pages where you say goodbye to the apartment show the pain you felt then. You describe it as a grieving process.

— The grief of losing an apartment is huge, and I still haven't gotten over it.

You compare this apartment on Princesa Street with the house in Sao Paulo where you grew up with your parents.

— All the places I've lived until now and can no longer return to are what I define in the book as the house of the past. The house of the past can be the place of learning, of understanding family hierarchies, the place where you spent time as a student... It's also the houses of grandparents or parents when you leave: whenever you return, it's as a visitor. The house of the past is also the house you lose because you have to leave it against your will, as happened to us.

From there we move on to the other two houses analyzed in the book: the house of the present and the house of the future.

— The home of the present should be, as WH Auden writes in a poem, "a farmhouse and a terrace where I shall never have to be at home among those with whom I do not feel at home."

Your current home isn't the idyllic place you expected. You say you live there with anguish.

— Yes. A few years before we had to leave our Barcelona apartment, three friends and I bought a house in the countryside, intended as a weekend or summer getaway. It was a shared second home, and our relationship gradually deteriorated. Life as a couple or with children is difficult enough, but living with longtime friends can also be complicated. When we were forced to move in, we arrived with only one suitcase, having left all our belongings in a storage unit in Sant Joan Despí. We didn't have our things, and apart from our bedroom, we didn't have any other space of our own where we could move around freely. On top of all this, there was the stress of searching for a rental apartment in Barcelona for a long time, and then, once we realized we had to buy one, finding a place we liked and could afford.

It's been two years during which you've gotten sick. You've even had to undergo surgery.

— It was a very difficult time. It started with a debilitating neuropathy and culminated in cervical spondylitis. It was unexpected to find myself so ill. I suppose I somatized all that anguish.

The doctor who treated you in Girona told you that "losing your apartment in Barcelona because of speculators, fleeing to temporary shelter, and the bewilderment of uncertainty" were related to "the deterioration of your health." More and more Barcelonans are having to leave the city because they can't afford to stay.

— It's an outrageous situation. With this real estate extermination, Barcelona is losing its character, what its citizens gave it. It creates a domino effect, because those who have to leave Barcelona end up in other places, towns and cities, and from there, people will eventually be expelled. I'm explaining all this from a broad perspective, but if we look at each case, we're talking about personal tragedies. It's not just a political issue, but a deeply personal one. A huge influx...

Acció de gràcies for a house It also focuses on more extreme cases, such as the destruction of thousands of buildings in Gaza during the last war. "The destruction of residential areas of all kinds has a name: domicile", you write.

— Destroying a house is a way of destroying the soul of the person who lived there. I'm talking about the domicile I see Gaza from a great distance, and I look at it as a privileged person, because in the end I am, but I try to establish relationships between each experience.

The book opens with the story of an entire village that loses its homes because a reservoir is to be built. Before the massive move, the women who live there clean and lock up their houses before leaving empty-handed. This gesture allows you to recall some words from Marguerite Duras"Men know how to build houses, but they don't know how to create them."

— This also brings me to Gaston Bachelard, when he mentions that men are not very familiar with what he calls "the wax civilization." This is the civilization that remains behind closed doors and that women have highly developed. At this point, Acció de gràcies for a house It's a tribute to housewives. They don't receive a salary and are dependent, but they possess the wisdom of the wax culture, which consists of being able to organize family life, plan shopping, and manage the household. But the wax civilization isn't limited to cleaning and tidying; it's also connected to memory, allowing you to know where your possessions come from and learn to cherish them. We need objects to speak to us. Thanks to them, we can connect with our ancestors. If you know that the blanket you're covering yourself with belonged to your grandmother or mother-in-law, it provides a different kind of warmth, doesn't it? It transcends everyday needs because it perpetuates the memory of those who have passed away, or even those who are still alive. Of their love.

You mentioned Severina's story earlier, which is at the heart of the book. You explain it in the last chapter. She's not the only housewife who appears in the book. Why is that?

— I've known her since I was very little. In Brazil, if you had a certain social standing, it was essential to have a housekeeper. She would help you with the cleaning, and you would help her support herself with the salary you paid her. It's sad that the people who take care of someone else's home often can't afford a place to live.

The house of the future is the place where we project our dreams, where we want to live someday. After this difficult season, have you found your way back to Barcelona?

Yes. Every day brings us a little closer to going to get our things from the storage unit where they've been for the last two years. Soon we'll be able to take them to the new apartment and try to put them in the perfect spot. Little by little, I hope, it will feel more like the place we came from and eventually become our home.