Coia Valls: "I was a very invisible child"

Coia Valls (Reus 1960) is an actress, teacher, speech therapist, and writer. In 2010 she won the Néstor Luján prize for historical novels with her first novel, The Jade Princess. She now publishes her tenth, Gaudí's Dream (Rosa dels Vents).

She studied at the Sant Josep school in Reus. “It was a convent school, and my mother started taking me before I was old enough, at two years old, because she had to work and look after my younger sister”. She was a very quiet child. “While my sister would climb everywhere, I was like an artichoke. I would listen, look, play with a toy and could spend hours like that”.

When she left school, she went to her grandmother's house. “I had a very special connection with my father's mother. My mother was always busy and my grandmother was a very calm person, who knitted cushions. That sound has always accompanied me like a melody in which I find warmth, it's like being at home”.

Near Reus they had a chicken farm. “My father was a traveling salesman at first, he was a representative for I don't know what product. And then we set up a chicken farm. I weighed the eggs and helped with whatever was needed. We spent summers there. We played with mud, buying and selling, we went on excursions, we went looking for snails when it rained, we repaired the path with my father, we laid stones, we dug, we removed weeds, we bathed in a pond... We didn't go to camps or anything like that”.

At home, my father had an office. “It was an absolutely forbidden place for my sister and me. One day when he went out, I went in and picked up a book: Seven Ways to Kill a Son. And for a while I kept observing my father, wondering what we had done, if we were bothering him or what. And then much later I understood what the true meaning of that title was”.

Best friends

A sister a year and a half younger. “She was my best friend. We played a lot. She is much more bossy, even though she is younger. I remember my mom telling me, take care of your sister, because I was the older one. These roles that are established in families. And I used to say, but how am I supposed to take care of my sister? If when I arrive, she has already gone, gone up, gone again and gone through again. She was much more action-oriented.”

At 13 years old they went to live in Tarragona, where their parents opened a poultry shop and a restaurant. “I cried, because the people of Reus are very much from Reus. Dad had the bell of Reus drawn in the dining room! It was a bit difficult to settle into Tarragona. In fact, it is my adopted city, but home is Reus”.

She discovered her vocation for writing. “I didn't have many skills, nor was I agile in competitive terms, or in sports. Therefore, I was very invisible. But since I was always writing, because I was looking for words to understand myself, my friends noticed my ability and would look for me at school to make Christmas cards, to write a love letter to their boyfriend…”

She studied teaching. “I wanted to study psychology or therapeutic pedagogy, but I had to go to Barcelona and then I couldn't. I thought: I'll study teaching, I'll be able to work, earn a salary and study abroad. And when I finished early childhood education, I needed to know more and I started working with children with cerebral palsy. And in the meantime, I studied therapeutic pedagogy and when I finished, speech therapy. I have spent about 40 years in public schools, 30 years working with children with deafness and severe disorders. And writing in parallel for the last 29 years”.

And what emerges from your childhood in your novels? “The helpless girl, that ability to isolate myself from the world that I had, and also the rebellion, at a certain point to stand up and say, enough is enough. That woman who emerges braver, who tries not to be invisible”.