Cristina Canamases: "For the generation of my children it is unthinkable to meet a person in an analog way"

Three summers ago we traveled to Croatia and Montenegro and we drove around in a rented car. To take a shortcut, we passed through Bosnia. We had no problem entering, but when it came time to leave, there was an error with Laura's ID card.

Why?

— Because she had taken an ID card that she had lost a long time ago. We had given notice that she had lost it, but then she found it. Therefore, that ID card she was showing was listed as lost or stolen and Interpol received an alert. Imagine my face when they told me that Laura could not leave Bosnia. A police officer was joking, saying he would take Laura because he had two children of the same age at home.

Phew, what a situation. Did your motherly instinct kick in?

— We spent four hours at customs, until using my skills as an actress and an exaggerated crybaby I managed to make them feel very sorry for me and they let us leave. I ran to the car with my two children and the skid was worthy of Fast & furious.

Soon they will live these kinds of adventures without their mother being able to save them.

— Laura and Marc are no longer children. Laura is a newly minted adult, and that has its own peculiarities. The freedom and room for maneuver that I have always wanted to give her have benefited both her development as a person and our mother-daughter relationship.

And the little one?

— He is at an age where he is defining his personality. It is very enriching to see how he chooses, explores, and selects, always based on the values that I, as best as I could, have given him.

What does the story of Elizabeth Siddal teach young women like Laura?

— That no one should tell them what they can and cannot do, that they can become whatever they want to be. In a university class, Josep Fontana explained that, when Siddal posed for Millais's painting, she almost died of pneumonia because she had to stay for many hours in a bathtub where the water was supposed to be warm. Elizabeth was not only a model, but she also painted and wrote. I was captivated by her struggle, the obsession to create and, at the same time, the impossibility of transcending as an artist in the Victorian era. As a disturbing part, I was surprised by her tendency towards what is gloomy, dark, and dismal. Her romance with death.

How did it end?

— My daughter was curious to know how it had turned out and had to read Eterna Ofèlia to find out.

Which aspects of Marc and Laura's growth do you give special importance to?

— I place great importance on peace of mind, on being in agreement with oneself and doing as you wish, not as your environment dictates. I encourage them to make their own decisions with freedom and I place a lot of emphasis on that. The three of us have lived alone almost always, we have been a single nucleus. But now they have their own environment, they go out and live their own lives. Nothing makes me happier than seeing them live their own life.

They start to move away...

— When we can, we travel. We have many good memories of the trips. We go to concerts together, music unites us. And, what I like the most, we share conversations.

When children grow up, the complexity of the problems they have grows as well.

— I love helping them manage emotional conflicts. I always tell them that I do not have the absolute truth. I let them speak, I listen to them, and then I explain similar situations that have happened to me and tell them what I have been able to learn from them. I tell them: the only difference between you and me is that I have been running around the world longer and have had more time for things to happen to me.

What are you worried about?

— The young people of Marc's generation live in a virtual era where all relationships happen through social media. It is unthinkable for them to try to meet a person in an analog way. In this way, relationships are trivialized, they become superficial, and the only thing that counts is posting that you have had I don't know how many partners. As they grow up, fortunately, this changes.

We have not talked about the Macaroni.

— It is something that has made us laugh. We have a cat, Macarrons, and we always take lots of photos of him in funny positions and strange expressions. Happiness is that, isn't it? Moments that seem insignificant but in reality are everything.