Lluís Llach: "I have to die at a time when values I loved are going to hell."

BarcelonaLluís Llach (Girona, 1948) has been practicing "the craft of contradicting" for decades. He has done so through songs like The stake and various challenges to the Franco regime. Since leaving music, Llach has shifted his iconoclasm towards literature, with novels such as The women of the Principal (Empúries, 2014) and The boy from Maravillas (Empúries, 2017), while He has been deeply involved in the civic and political struggle for the independence of Catalonia.. He has found a gap in his busy schedule as president of the Catalan National Assembly, which he has led since last June, to talk aboutThe Golden Book (Universe, 2025).

This novel, the fifth he has published since his debut with Memory of painted eyes (Empúries, 2012), takes readers back to the 13th century, and is connected to the previous one, Checkmate to fate (Universe, 2020).

— My life with publishers is a kind of terrifying gymkhana. Checkmate to fate It came out a year late, and between the time I finished it and its publication, I kept asking myself where I wanted to continue. During the research process for that novel, I had found a document that shocked me, stating that the Inquisition didn't kill witches. Until then, I thought it did, like so many other people. How could such a lie have prevailed? I wondered.

From there he stretched the thread until he reached the story ofThe Golden Book?

— Yes. The Spanish Inquisition was active from the end of the 15th century. Long before they were called witches, female healers or sorceresses were already beginning to be persecuted. It was in the mid-13th century that the first universities were established. At that time, when teaching through the arts became official, women disappeared from the map. There is a wonderful example that illustrates this. In Salerno, in the 11th century, there lived a woman, Trotula de Ruggiero, daughter of the richest family in the city, who wrote the first treatise on obstetrics known in Europe. This treatise spread far and wide... Until the 13th century, when Trotula was no longer known by her name, which was replaced by Trotos or Platerio.

Trotula had mysteriously turned into a man.

— There has been constant racism toward women since Adam and Eve. According to the Bible, Eve is to blame for men having to work and sweat so she can become a mother... Machismo has been and is the first racism that exists in the world, and it's not a skin problem, but a gender problem.

In The Golden Book There is an abundance of healers and sorceresses: at first they are well regarded, but as the novel progresses they are questioned.

— My hypothesis is that the semantic network that justified racism against women and against healers was the university. Healers were persecuted for being women and also for being free.

Characters like Sança, Morgana, and Julia serve people, healing them from their misfortunes with potions, ointments, essences, oils, and poultices... and passing on knowledge from mothers to daughters.

— This point is important. Genís Feiner, one of the novel's main characters, convinces the healers to share their knowledge with him, and at the same time, he comes into contact with medicine thanks to Abü, a doctor and philosopher from Granada. He can't explain how his ideas work so well... That's why he wants his son, Arnau, to study medicine and try to integrate both fields of knowledge to heal people.

In the 13th century, medicine was much more advanced in Muslim countries than in Christian countries.

— While leeches were used here to cure all kinds of illnesses, in Granada and the Maghreb, medicine had advanced so much that cataract surgery was already being performed. There's a moment when Abü says that Christians would end up being for Al-Andalus what barbarians had been for the Roman Empire.

Just like writers like Amin Maalouf, likes to dismantle the official versions of history.

— I like to expose manipulations. Both past and present.

For a few years now, we've been constantly talking about fake news, but it hasn't stopped authoritarian parties from winning elections recently.

— We've had two centuries of democracy, leaving Napoleon and other nonsense aside. Until then, standards of conduct had been conveyed through religion. Little by little, democracies created a network of ethical values: liberty, equity, fraternity... The current reactionary movement, which began with Margaret Thatcher's neoliberalism, aims to destroy the civic morality built over two centuries of democracy. Unbridled capitalism needs to break the control represented by morality, standards, and ethics.

Since the beginning of his career in the 1960s, he has not stopped raising his voice against political and social injustices.

— I've fought all my life to build a better world, and without regretting it one bit. Now I see how the quality of human coexistence is declining. I have to die at a time when the values I cherished are going to hell.

And as a Catalan, do you feel especially frustrated?

— Living it as a Catalan is the best. We Catalans will only exist if we want to. Even on the day we have freedom, we will have to continue our struggle. Everything is against us. Over the last ten years, we have attempted to achieve collective freedom through pacifism, democratic actions, and adhering to the Constitution until it crumbled.

Then came the repression.

— We found fascism.

How are we now?

— It's quite frustrating. But this doesn't make me desperate: being Catalan is a wonderful school of life. I'm very grateful for being gay, because it allowed me to question everything I was told was true and false. I had to develop a political, cultural, and social awareness from a very early age.

He dedicated himself to music from a very young age.

— And I didn't want that! My job has been to go against the grain. But I don't do it from a place of protest, but rather from a place of indignation: every time I've delved into a topic, I've realized that the spaces of human freedom are small and easily manipulated.