Gerard Guix: "At school, nobody ever knew I liked boys"

Gerard Guix (Vic, 1975) is a writer and playwright. He won the 2022 Joaquim Ruyra Prize with the youth novel A lighthouse at the end of the world. Now he has published the second part, Beyond the end of the world.

He lived in Tona until the fifth year of primary school and in the sixth year they moved to Vic. "I went to the Sagrado Corazón. I was a good student, a good boy. When I was older, in high school, not so much, because I got bored." He did vocational training at the Vic Institute. "Electricity and electronics, because my parents said I was going to study something until I could go to Barcelona to do image and sound, which was what I wanted." And after school? "In Tona I played football, but I didn't like it at all. In Vic, IT, with those giant computers... But I don't remember many extracurricular activities."

When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he replied: "A writer." "Since I was very young. At school they made you write the typical one-page essay, but mine was seven. Every year I won the Floral Games. I had an Olivetti typewriter and I wrote my books and bound them." He still has some of them. "They are terrible. It was the time when I didn't read. When I started reading later, I tried to imitate what I read and I found resources there."

His father worked in a bank and his mother worked at home. "They have always supported me. After high school I went to Barcelona, ​​​​to the IDEP school, to do image and sound. This seemed more feasible to us. Being a writer was like something very ethereal, what are you going to make a living with?" He has a sister who is two years older. "She has not dedicated herself to writing or anything like that, I am the odd one out in the family."

And then came the theatre. "After studying at IDEP, I saw that making films was very expensive. Some friends who did theatre told me to write something, we put it together and that's how I started trying my hand."

Reality and fiction

Max and Àlex are two teenagers who fall in love in A lighthouse at the end of the worldWe asked which character he most resembles. "With Max I share discovery and acceptance. All of us, gay or straight, have gone on to discover what we like, what we don't like and what we want to do. And with Alex I share that he is more daring, more adventurous, and very empathetic. I think I am a mix of both."

His experience at high school also has similarities with those of the characters. "My first year was hard. They laughed at me because I was jumping around and they asked me if I was a faggot. This joke was already being made and it still continues. Then, as I repeated a year, I became the oldest, the most popular, and they didn't mess with me anymore."

It's not the same now as it was before. "In the 80s and 90s it was much more complicated. Nobody ever knew that I liked boys. There were no role models that I could say: "Look, in these soap operas there are boys who have this happen to them, or in these films or series." When a gay person came out, he was the friend and they laughed at me."

"[Max and Alex's love] is the story that I and many people of my generation couldn't have. It was unfeasible, impossible. What's more, you went through the phase of "Come on, I'll get over that, I must like girls," and you forced yourself to find one for her. Love, it's reciprocal and there's no problem, it would have been wonderful."

The island in the novel is made up, "it's idyllic, a refuge." "It's inspired by an island in Holland called Marken. It also has things from Menorca, where I did my military service. I'm embarrassed to say that I had a good time doing my military service. Although I had to build a shell and be as heterosexual as possible, being on the island was like a holiday, I didn't go, no, I, ..."