Toni Cruanyes: "I discovered that my great-grandmother's family home was a 'patera' flat."

BarcelonaMaria Becana was born in 1900 and was called the woman of the century. Her story was already hinted at in the book The Valley of Light (Destiny, 2022), with which Toni Cruanyes (Canet de Mar, 1974) won the Josep Pla award. The journalist and presenter of the Evening news In her second book, TV3's program rescues the life of this woman, her great-grandmother, and also that of two other women who were leaders in her family: her grandmother, Teresa Masvidal, and her aunt, Victoria Cruanyes. The woman of the century (Column), Cruanyes carries out an exercise in restoring their figures with a book of family memoirs and historical journalism that explores the past of Canet de Mar from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1990s.

What led you to write about these three women?

— I came across the book out of nostalgia for my great-grandmother and grandmother. They loved me very much, and I enjoyed them with great tenderness. A happy childhood is often the gateway to a happy and fulfilling life. I am grateful to them. In the previous book, I saw that they deserved more attention. The figure of my great-grandmother captivated me. She was a strong woman who took great initiative. Her story echoed those of other women, because she did things in collusion with her sister, her younger sister, and her mother. The common element is that they ignored men. And I, as the heir to the official memory of the men in the family, was completely unaware of all this.

What relationship did you have with your great-grandmother?

— She let me do anything. She ignored the orders my mother and the nuns at school gave her. One day she came to kindergarten and gave me ice cream in front of everyone. The other children complained, the nuns told her not to do it anymore, but she didn't listen. We both had a secret. She kept Play-Doh in her room. My mother didn't want me to have it because it made everything dirty, but she bought it for me anyway, and I would sneak into her room to play. When my aunt was born, they held a family vote to decide on a name, and Isabel was chosen, but she said her name would be Gloria, and she is. The men had the authority, but she ended up making the decisions.

Maria Becana's parents came from Aragon and learned Catalan so they could speak to the rich.

— It's the story of many families who arrived in Catalonia at that time: the husbands went to work on railway construction sites, and the wives worked as seamstresses for wealthy families. They learned Catalan through work; it was a language that helped them move up the social ladder. They naturalized it and made it their own, to the point that years later they were the first to defend it despite the imposition of Spanish during Franco's regime.

Theirs is the story of a very poor people who, after working hard, finally manage to improve their situation.

— But this wasn't the official internal story of my family. The male branch was a family of tinsmiths and electricians for 150 years, always linked to generations and generations of Catalans between Canet and Arenys de Munt. The Aragonese branch wasn't part of the story. It's not that I didn't love them. Simply, when it came to defining ourselves as a 100% Catalan family, that part was ignored. Perhaps because we tried to hide the poor side, or because integration was such that those who weren't from Canet were also from Canet.

However, Maria Becana was closely linked to Aragon.

— I have discovered that, with modern eyes, my great-grandmother's family home was an apartment. boatThrough her, all the people who lived in poverty in Aragon came to Catalonia. They spent a few months in her house until they could settle elsewhere. The family idea that has remained is that in their grandparents' house there was always a hodgepodge of people, without specifying who they were. Today, if we knew where we came from and what our ancestors went through, we would surely also be more understanding of the reality of the newcomers.

You yourself confess on several occasions that you heard yourself called an imposter while writing the book. Why?

— At some point, I thought I shouldn't have done this, that I was getting myself into a difficult mess to escape. I needed to clean up my male perspective so I could write about these three women. The push came from [writers] Montse Barderi, Gemma Ruiz, and Gemma Casamajó. They convinced me that I have every right to tell my grandmother's story, because I'm her grandson. Gemma Casamajó insisted on the context, the political moment, and the oppression of women at that time. This led me to discover facts like that during the Canet Carnival, there was a tradition of hunting girls, and that after the Civil War, when the Italian soldiers arrived, there were rapes in the town. I don't think my grandmother was a victim, but if it had happened, we probably wouldn't know about it either.

You write that "the kindness and selflessness of grandmothers is a challenge to understanding their personalities." Why?

— It's above all my view of them. Nostalgia leads us to this nebulous belief that the past was wonderful, and that doesn't fit well with research that seeks to explore what happened. I begin the book thinking that my grandmother bought me toys, and, upon further investigation, I discover that she knew how to shoot a shotgun and confronted a soldier. We all have wonderful memories of our grandfathers and grandmothers, but sometimes that feeling of nostalgia can be counterproductive if we want to discover what was happening to women in that era.

Which writers have been the beacons of The woman of the century?

— For this book, I especially liked Mercè Rodoreda and Montserrat Roig. But I've been reading many contemporary authors for a while now. I love Maggie O'Farrell and Elizabeth Strout. Silvia Soler, Marta Orriols, and Marta Rojals, too. They tell me new stories from different perspectives.