Agnès Marquès: "Love, more than a refuge, is sometimes a battlefield"

BarcelonaWinner of the Ramon Llull prize for the novel "La segona vida de Ginebra Vern" (Columna), journalist Agnès Marquès delves into a story of love, revenge and – her profession demands it – reflection on what overly simple and appealing tales may hide. In this interview, she delves into her novel and also reviews a very prolific professional career.

In the newspaper, an announcement signed by a woman congratulates her husband and his lover on the child they are expecting. From there, a journalist embarks on a journey to dig beyond the surface of this real story. And you, as an author, have also done this investigative work. What were you looking for?

— I stumbled upon the announcement while looking for revenge stories. I wondered how I would get back at them. The way to hurt that person who hurt you the most is a public shaming. I was struck by how something that happened thousands of miles away was treated by the press in our environment as clickbait. And that bothered me: what right do I have to know the lives of these three people? And another question arose: what if it's not true? Then, from there, everything is fiction.

But you traveled to Texas, following in the footsteps of your protagonist.

— I felt the need to go there to get to know the environment, to be able to tell the story of these three people. Perhaps it is professional deformation, but writing from thousands of miles away was difficult for me. And it has enriched the novel greatly, because it is not just any place in the United States: it is the "Bible Belt", where there is a morality and a faith that mark all relationships, whatever their type.

The narrator encounters The Refuge, a church that promises earthly healing as well. To tired European eyes, it might seem like pure spectacular religious fanaticism, but the narrator avoids making a judgment.

— In fact, the narrator avoids judging anything, if you notice. I wanted to leave everything very open for the reader to take sides and decide. Seen from the outside, judgment seems very easy, but those people have their reasons, their culture, and their history for being that way.

Do you apply this motto to yourself too?

— Yes. In fact, the book is precisely that.

But judging is inevitable.

— It can be done carefully, but you always have to remember that the information you have is only a part and that you are seeing it from a subjective perspective. Therefore, I try never to rush.

Do you think our profession is full of hasty judgments? Or would answering that be a judgment?

— Journalism, and society in general, is imperfect. But it is people who fail, not journalism. It is not the jobs, but the people, who sometimes rush. And I insist, this is not limited to journalism, because we all tell stories, even if it's to the neighbor next door.

And this interest in revenge, where does it come from?

— Although the book flies in other directions, I am curious about people who carry out revenge.

Have you ever plotted one?

— No, no. Precisely because I have never plotted one, I am very intrigued by people who are capable of revenge, because I don't know what happens to them.

And have you felt like a victim of revenge?

— No. Or I haven't been aware of it, at least. But I am very interested in the profile of people who take revenge, because we have all found ourselves in a situation where someone has hurt us and we have thought about it. And when one person hurts another, we agree that there is a perpetrator and a victim. But when, after a while, the victim acts with the same methods as the perpetrator... that breaks the balance of things, and something deeply bothers me. I think not taking revenge is the only way not to spread more and more pain and to put an end to a story.

So, do you condemn revenge?

— I don't condemn it, I don't condemn anything. Let everyone do what they can. We are here to do what we can. But I wouldn't do it, I wouldn't take revenge.

The two main parts of the book are titled "Truth" and "Reality." Aren't they the same?

— No, they are not the same. What interested me in exploring in the novel is precisely this space between reality and truth. This thing that we journalists do, but also all of us, as citizens, when we observe facts and look at them with our experience and turn them into a narrative that is logically loaded with our point of view and our baggage.

Telling other people's stories is delicate, then.

— Constructing a narrative with someone's story is an act of responsibility, it is an operation of power. And therefore, we must be very responsible when we decide that this will be the narrative of the events. Can one explain a person's life without occupying it, without colonizing it, with our own gaze?

You answer me.

— These are questions I throw into the air. But I don't think so. Inevitably, we simplify. And sometimes we are not aware enough of it when we tell someone's story. I also wonder what we do with other people's lives when we have them in our hands. We often lack a lot, a lot of information. When explaining something, we should never stop asking the moral question par excellence, which is: "What should I do with this information?" Isaiah Berlin says there is negative liberty, that is, that I can do everything that the law does not explicitly prohibit me from doing, and positive liberty, which is to ask oneself, within what the law allows, "What should I do?" And, for me, this second one is the good one, and it is what Ginebra asks herself. And, perhaps, the most ethical thing sometimes is not to explain.

Earlier you said "I don't condemn anything." But your protagonist does have very clear ideas about where journalism is heading in the click era.

— No, of course, Ginebra is from a generation in which journalism was a fairly safe ground with a few basic rules. For her, doing journalism is still that. But now this journalism can be diluted, because there are things that have its appearance, like tweets that seemingly inform about things but have a different methodology. Perhaps journalism should indeed reclaim its way of doing things, so as not to lose its identity.

Another of the characters, Pere, says: "Journalism and culture will save us." My word, the optimism!

— Pere is a romantic! And the phrase is very utopian, indeed. But I don't think he's entirely wrong, because good journalism, which we must defend tooth and nail, can improve us as a society. And culture is a refuge, it makes us stop time, it makes us think, it makes us reflect, it makes us learn new things and reach interesting conclusions. It is true that there can be very well-read and very enlightened people who are not good people, but that is not the point, but rather perhaps to think more collectively and less individually.

This tension between narrative and truth is also seen in two of the quotes in the novel. One, by Nietzsche, says that there are no facts, only representations. The other, by John R. Searle, reminds us that the world exists independently of any particular representation we may have of it. Who do you side with?

— I do believe that things exist despite interpretations. In the end, from Nietzsche I like that it is remembered that there are facts that we pass over so quickly that they almost seem to evaporate.

I would say that in recent years Nietzsche is winning. If facts don't exist, I can say the Earth is flat and get away with it.

— I agree with what you say. It is happening and, in the end, the novel is also about that, about binary thinking. About thinking "I don't care about the rest. I don't care about all the shadow area." Of course, that makes the message get simplified as it is transmitted. And precisely because telling the story of others without simplifying it is impossible, let's at least do it responsibly.

The novel also talks about love. What is the message here?

— Look, I think there are many forms of love that are very generous, but that love... or for love, people often act without being aware of the harm they can do, and that love is a brutal moral testing ground in all its forms. Romantic love, fraternal love, love tests us and, more than a refuge, it is sometimes a battlefield.

Among the recent winners of the Llull are Gerard Quintana, Estel Soler, Pilar Rahola, or Ramon Gener, who do not have literature as their primary occupation. Are you afraid of being labeled a media writer?

— No fear at all, bring it on.

You've traveled a lot, professionally speaking: television, radio, in almost all time slots... Is it a sign of a restless spirit or that journalism is as it is?

— Restless spirit! I have a lot of fun at work. And I spent ten years presenting the "TN", which I think is a lot of years doing just one thing. I made the change because they approached me and I was happy to do it, and then they offered me to return to television and I said: "Let's try it." And television ends, and now I'm back to radio because they've offered it to me.

Aren't you afraid of uncertainty?

— Yes, of course, like everyone else.

But some fear it less.

— I fear it, but I have rarely lost my serenity of spirit. And I think that is a virtue.

Confidence in yourself or ignorance?

— It must be that balance, and surely there is a bit of everything. In the end, I've been around this professional world for 25 years. If I didn't have self-confidence, I don't think I would be functioning, would I? We have to know what our strengths and weaknesses are, and I think I know them.

What are they?

— Well, no! I'm quite sociable but introverted, and it's incredibly hard for me to talk about myself, so I'll let others talk and say what they want, rather than me talk about myself. In general, in society, the ego is too much the center, and individualism too. If I were to define myself now, surely by some wild instinct I would try to sell myself in a very specific way, seeking the perception of others to be what interested me. I prefer not to find myself in that situation. I find that ego is the great enemy. For oneself, but also for others, for the people one lives with.

Do you work on lowering the ego?

— I work on it, because ego can make you improve yourself and compete with yourself... or make you compete with others. I have always had it in the realm of competing with myself, and that is why I am very demanding of myself. And I feel blessed, because I have never had the ego to compete with others. When I see someone who does, I always feel sorry: they must have a very bad time. And this leads us to the constant cult of the self, in the media, on Instagram... Criticizing institutions is fine, but they are made up of people. So, the solution, if there is one, is to start by people being more complete, more responsible. If the people in institutions do not have a moral sense of their participation in society, it will be very difficult for things to go well.

Culture will save us all, huh?

— Culture will save us all, yes! [laughs] What we need are more complete, more committed citizens, less individualistic. Therefore, we must put an end to this culture of "me first".

And how is that done?

— By returning to culture.

But one can be a perfectly well-read person and at the same time a real scoundrel...

— Yes, yes, yes, totally. But I think we must not lose the sense of society. We must remember that you alone can do nothing, in society. We can do nothing alone. We live in society and we depend extremely on each other. We saw it during the pandemic, it was the great example. And yet, now, six years later, it seems we have completely forgotten it.

Do you have a dream project?

— Now it's writing. I want to continue doing my main job, which is journalism, but right now the excitement is thinking that in the next twenty or thirty years I will want to write more.

You'll never retire, will you?

— I don't know, I don't know.

I say that because you mentioned thirty years, and you'll be 76.

— [Laughs] Maybe I went too far. But I wanted to say that I'm excited about writing, even though I'm very good at radio. And I really like the evening slot. In the end, it's the time slot in which I've done the most radio.

If they tempted you with the mornings...

— No, that's not... I don't deny anything I've done, nor do I close any doors, because life... who knows. But I will tell you that the current moment is the perfect point of serenity between vocation, passion, and personal balance. It's fantastic. I do a program I love, with colleagues I love, at a time that is very good and gives me free mornings to write. Right now, therefore, I wouldn't change it.

When you left television after ten years on "TN", was there tiredness beyond the offer?

— I had been talking with the TV management for some time to be able to do something else, and in fact, I did: the program "La gent normal", which allowed me to grow and try a new register. And I am very grateful to them. But I remember that I already had an unease then and I opened a website and wrote some articles, but just to leave them there, without any objective or thinking that they would give me a subsequent return.

And you leave television again after "Planta baixa", which was a program they canceled because it didn't quite work in terms of audience, with 8.4% on a channel where the average audience was 15%.

— Well, you'll never find 15% in that slot, because you know that a channel's programming has strong and weak slots. But perhaps things weren't done quite right. They were two seasons in which I learned a lot and had a great time, and I drew some lessons for the next twenty years.

Like what?

— Oh, no, no. I'll keep them to myself.

We've talked about literature and journalism, but now let me be disgustingly materialistic: I'd like to know what you'll do with the 60,000 euros from the prize.

— [Laughs] What do those who win the lottery say?

Covering debts!

— That's it! I haven't thought about it yet. Maybe I'll save it, it's very difficult to be okay these days.