Lluís-Anton Baulenas: "I thought I would reach retirement peacefully, but it wasn't to be."

BarcelonaHumanity is divided into two groups: the little birds and the little birds. The little birds, who are the majority, are usually victims of the minority of birds who subjugate them. This is one of the lessons of the Marxist crow in the film. Little birds and little birds, of Pier Paolo Pasolini (Bologna, 1922-Òstia, 1975), writer and filmmaker who has inspired the latest novel by Lluís-Anton Baulenas (Barcelona, ​​​​1958). In Little birds and little birds (Edicions Xandri, 2025), the Barcelona-born author explains how Pasolini, days before his lifeless body was found on a beach near Rome, visited his executioner and demanded explanations about who had asked him to kill him and for what reasons.

Three years after winning the Santa Eulàlia Prize with I will be your mirror (Comanegra, 2023), Baulenas presents one of his most tense and unsettling novels, where he gives as much importance to the victim as to the murderer and includes several narrative twists that the reader will appreciate. The author ofThe silver thread (Column, 1998) and Mussolini's nose (Proa, 2009) is still going strong and has a couple of projects in the works.

When Pasolini's body was found lifeless on the beach at Ostia on November 2, 1975, you were 17 years old. Had you already seen films or read books?

— Not yet. Pasolini died two and a half weeks before Franco. Everything we had missed because of the dictatorship began to arrive from then on. I read his work and saw his films in the late 70s. In 1980 I already made an attempt to pay homage to Pasolini through a play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

At the end ofLittle birds and little birds You acknowledge that Dürrenmatt has also inspired this novel.

— As the 50th anniversary of Pasolini's death approached, I put aside the book of short stories I was writing and started on this short novel. Last July, when I had almost finished Little birds and little birdsI contacted them in Sebastian BennasarXandri, writer and editor, wanted the novel published before the end of the year. By 2024, Xandri had already recovered Names in the sand [Column, 1995] and I was happy, it seemed to me that it was the ideal place.

Returning to Pasolini takes us back to your beginnings in the world of theatre.

— It was a time when everything seemed possible. I taught high school at a private school in the mornings, and at night I dedicated myself to theater. During the 1980s I was constantly working, but in a very independent, even marginal, scene. I've never managed to reach a wide audience with theater, but it almost happened. Josep Maria Flotats almost directed a production at the Poliorama Theatre.The Brooklyn Bridge, with which he had won the Ciudad de Alcoy award [1995], which Ramon Madaula and Sílvia Munt were to perform.

With your novels you have reached many readers.

— The theater encouraged me to create works that I believed could interest people. It was as soon as I started writing fiction and debuted with the short stories of He who spits in heaven [Eumo, 1987]. From the beginning, my intention was to be able to leave teaching to dedicate myself to writing.

You didn't take long to achieve it: in 1989 you won the Documenta prize with Warm night, published by Edicions 62, and in the 90s you established yourself with novels like Names in the sand (1995), Alfonso XIV, a state crime (1997) and The silver thread (1998), all three with Columna.

— I made that decision many years ago. I've made a living from storytelling and its derivatives for a long time, but when you make this decision, you have to be aware of what it entails. You can live like Charlie Chaplin, with a boot and laces and imagine they're spaghetti... It's about understanding your needs and adapting to be able to do your work. I've had better times and worse times, but anyway, I was translated relatively early, and shortly after came the three film adaptations of Ventura PonsBooks, some of which have received awards [such as Sant Jordi, Prudenci Bertrana and Ramon Llull], journalistic collaborations, translations and films have allowed me to live, although always day to day, and I have gotten this far.

Here means up to Little birds and little birdswhich is not your final word as a writer.

— It won't be. I must keep writing because it's my life. Besides, I can't afford to stop. I thought I'd retire peacefully, but it wasn't to be. As long as I have the energy, I'll keep going, because I need to.

You are one of the authors who has written the most books about Barcelona, ​​and yet you were not among those chosen to go to the Guadalajara Book Fair Last December. Were you upset about not going?

— I was invited many years ago, when my son had just been born. Perhaps because I had already gone that time, this year they preferred to give the opportunity to someone else... When I'm feeling down, I remember a television anecdote that stuck with me. It was a report in which... Camilo José Cela Leaving the Congress of Deputies, where he was a senator for life, a young journalist stopped him and asked: "Don Camilo, what does writing mean to you?" And he replied: "Miss, writing means enduring." I completely agree with these words of Cela.

Because?

— Writing means enduring, having a clear objective, especially if you have no other choice. All you can do is endure and persevere. Enduring means never ceasing to create. Enduring means surviving. Enduring means being as generous to beginners as you were to others in the beginning.

Do you remember anyone who was generous to you?

— Many people. But now two names come to mind: Ignacio Rierawho died a few months ago, and Emili TeixidorI am very grateful to them. Teixidor, for example, got me the first Spanish translation of Need [Portico, 1988], which had won the La Peca de la Viuda Reposada award.

This first prize was for an erotic novel, a very different genre from what we find in Happiness (Ediciones 62, 2001), which is also different from that ofService area (Destino, 2007) and fromLittle birds and little birds.

— Out of respect for the reader, one of my guiding principles has been to avoid repetition. The other has been to always offer a new literary risk. Little birds and little birds It all takes place in an enclosed space. Happiness I experiment with magical realism. In The silver thread I intersperse narrative subjects without ever specifying who is speaking.

We're going back to Barcelona. Do you agree that he is, perhaps, the most important character in everything you've written?

— If anyone has the patience to look at everything I've written as a whole, they'll see that Barcelona is one of my touchstones, simply because it's my environment, the place where I've always lived. I was born in Sant Andreu, grew up near Virrei Amat, lived for a long time in the Eixample district, and for the last few years, I've been a resident of the Can Baró neighborhood, where I'm very happy because it's so peaceful.

Your literary Barcelona begins with the opening of Via Laietana at the beginning of the 20th century and extends almost to the present day. It spans more than a century.

— I begin in the 20th century because the 19th century doesn't interest me as much, and it would have forced me to situate myself too closely within what is considered historical fiction. I don't like this label when talking about what I've done: there's a lot of history in my novels, but they aren't historicalEarly 20th-century Barcelona is the setting for Happiness, the one from the years of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship appears in Mussolini's nose, the one from the first post-war period comes out to For a bag of bones [Planeta, 2005]. Olympic Barcelona is the one of'Friends forever' [Bromera, 2017], and the one after is the setting for novels as Fool's love [Editions 62, 2003], When the pirate arrives and takes me away [RBA-La Magrana, 2013] and I will be your mirror [2023]. The book of short stories I'm working on now is set over the last 25 years. In each one, I focus on a very specific detail that I wanted to recapture, like the time when smoking was starting to be banned in bars and restaurants and there were partitions separating the two areas. There's a desire to bear witness in what I'm doing.

In the case of the novel about Pasolini, this testimony also exists, but in the sense of remembering someone who has been gone for years and yet remains influential.

— He was an immense figure as an intellectual who stood up to the system. Apart from the importance of his literary and cinematic workPasolini had profound insights into the world to come, particularly regarding globalization. He offered a scathing critique of television, both in its role in eradicating dialects and in its homogenization of mentalities. And then there's the role of his homosexuality. In that respect, too, he was an uncomfortable figure.

In Little birds and little birds You explain that between 1947 and 1975, he had 319 open cases against him, both for his sexual orientation and for his political ideas, books, and films. You speak of censorship procedures, suspension, and confiscation of his artistic work. In the novel, you have Pasolini say that, based on all this, he is the devil, "the true incarnation of evil."

— And this made his figure incredibly compelling. Then and now. Also because of how he ended up dying, so young, and in such strange circumstances, at 53. That's why I found it so interesting to confine someone who must kill and someone who must die to a dining room in an apartment, just as Dürrenmatt did in one of his works.

You chose a woman as the executioner. Why?

— To further capture the readers' attention. Of the two, he is the delicate one, she is the strong one. The novel takes place at the end of 1975 and delves into a debate that interests me greatly: the underbelly of the system, a very topical issue. Until the death penalty was legal, she acted within the law, but when it ceased to be so, although she continued working for the same people, she became a hitwoman.

She is the spokesperson for power. What power wanted to destroy Pasolini? The political? The business? The financial?

— A mixture of everything. There's a concept I've touched on in other novels, and it reappears here: how the system invents elements contrary to itself in order to justify its existence. Democracy allows for a dissenting minority on the condition that it never actually does anything, and when that might happen, it's repressed, period. That's what happened with Catalan independence. When things seemed to be getting serious, it was stopped.

Pasolini gradually annoyed the powerful until they tried to stop him. Why?

— It became a thorn in the side of those in power, until it was so annoying that they said, "Enough is enough." Not that anything special had happened. It's just that indifference from those in power...

In 1975 he was about to release one of his toughest films, Salon or the 120 Days of Sodom, in which he denounced the darkness of the powerful and the survival of fascism.

— Shortly before his death, Pasolini had delivered powerful speeches against fascism. He was erased from the public eye for many reasons, but it was widely believed that someone had killed him over a sexual matter. Not long after, the Red Brigades assassinated the politician Aldo Moro [1978], and it was never determined whether the authorities had manipulated them into carrying out the murder. Another high-profile case was the death of Roberto Calvi [1982], a Vatican financier who was found hanging from a bridge in London. Initially ruled a suicide, the circumstances remain unclear.

Little birds and little birds This ties in with your return to theatre. Since 2019 you have dedicated shows to Salvat-Papasseit, Ferrater, Brossa...

— If all goes well, the novel will be adapted for the stage this July as part of the Grec Festival. It will be directed by Víctor Alvaro at the Golem'S Theatre (formerly Almería Theatre) and will star Joan Vázquez and Gemma Deusedas.

Will we ever see another one of your books adapted into a film? The last one was Adrift, directed by Ventura Pons in 2009.

— Ventura and I would see each other occasionally. He wasn't part of our inner circle, but we were friends. He read everything I wrote, and we always met up to discuss it. One novel he really liked but didn't feel comfortable adapting himself was About scrofa, which was later reissued under the name ofThe cannibals [Column, 1998]. One of his collaborators, Xavier Basté, worked on the project, and about three years ago his sister contacted me because she's interested in resuming the film. The last time I met with Ventura was at the end of 2023. We signed the contract for the stage adaptation ofAnita doesn't miss the trainwhich he himself had directed for the cinema in 2000. Two weeks later I learned that he had just died.