Mar Camps: "The culture that is created in the villages is tremendously more interesting than that created in the city."

GironaFor ten years, journalist and professor Mar Camps (Palamós, 1991) said she would never return to the village. "Celrà was a place that had been given to me; I hadn't built anything," she reflects. "I didn't imagine Celrà as my place." Unable to find a place to settle, she fled to Calabria, at the tip of Italy, "a land of passage, of people who emigrate, of people who arrive by boat, of people who don't quite fit in anywhere." That experience, written slowly over almost five years in the form of a diary, has become her first novel: Without hands on the deep path. An autobiographical novel where the protagonist, Julia, is also approaching thirty and "envies people who don't doubt, who are clear about where they want to go, who have found their place."

The novel, published by Editorial Gavarres—where Camps has become the first writer in the collection— Narratives– is a generational ode to the "right to feel lost," but also a tribute to a territory, the Empordà del Gironès region, and its language. As the granddaughter of an Andalusian immigrant who grew up in Bordils and a maternal grandfather from Campdorà, the first pages of the book moved me deeply. I heard the grandparents speak," she says. felt because it is a book with great poetic fragments, designed to be read aloud–, but I also saw myself dressed up, during the time of the mimosas, when Grandpa died, accompanying Mom and Aunt Gofoyas to thechurch from Campdorà because they said mass for the grandparents.

The journey that Camps has undertaken with the novel has as its point of arrival a landscape and a people that needed to be narrated. Just like Àngel Madrià and his brother They started a quarter of a century ago with the magazine Barges A unique project to remember one's roots. Camps's novel is an intimate manifesto to transform them. And also to demonstrate with facts that today, "the culture created in villages is tremendously more interesting than that of the city."

Can Camps

Without hands on the deep path It's also a portrait of life on the farmhouses. "I come from a family that has a farmhouse that has been passed down from generation to generation to heirs for 700 years, and it still bears my surname," explains the author. In the novel, it's Can Fortuny, just as Camps's literary Celrà becomes Valltorta, Bordils becomes Riart, and Juià becomes Salermo. However, the details are the same. Like the deep path the novel encourages us to ride on bikes with no hands, with the same feeling of vertigo we felt when we were children. This nostalgic portrait of the farmhouses collides with modern-day life in the villages of the Empordà plain. "Until the 1950s or 1960s, those lucky enough to own a farmhouse lived off the properties and the riverside trees, but then it became unprofitable, they were sold, and today they are second homes. They no longer exist because they are linked to the land and shape the landscape, but simply because they allow for disconnection," the journalist reflects.

'La Llera del Ter'

But while the farmhouses languished and were buried by the Celrà industrial estate, a new identity was born in the 1990s, thanks to a magazine, to give "self-esteem" to a land straddling two regions: between Gironès and Empordà.The Ter Riverbed, a biannual publication which includes eight municipalities and which Camps, with Lia Pou, took over as director in 2016 and which he gave new impetus to in 2021 with a new design. "I've always been interested in international journalism, but also in the universality of ultra-local journalism, due to its interconnectedness," says Camps.

De pura cepa Festival

By now, you'll have understood that Julia's journey brings her back home, where she decides to settle down and build her own world. Camps amb Celrà's cultural involvement began with the relaunch of the magazine The Ter Riverbed, which he wove from Calabria. the creation of the De pura cepa literature festival, supported by Conexión Papyrus. From April 26 to May 31, six municipalities along the Ter River are celebrating their second edition, which includes book presentations, painting exhibitions, and itineraries. "Our region is strong in theater, dance, and sculpture," Camps explains. "But no one spoke about our towns in terms of literature." This is how the project began to be conceived in 2023, and this year it already includes up to 40 participants. "The culture created in the towns is not only more interesting, but also more inventive and imaginative," the journalist asserts. "But because the movements are freer of heritage."

Can Pagans

This phenomenon is linked to a change in trends due to housing pressure. Julia ultimately decides to stay in Valltorta, but whether she will be able to become independent remains to be seen in a future chapter. Camps, upon returning from Calabria, rents an apartment in Celrà. Not just any apartment: the attic of Can Pagans, the home of the factory owners who drove the town's industrialization. Soon, however, she may have to leave. "They're selling the house to build a hotel, initially for cyclists," she explains. "I never expected that my town, which we held in no regard twenty years ago, would become a place people have chosen to go to," she adds. "Cities have changed a lot, but so have villages. If people leave the villages, the social dynamics of life that enrich them as a place to live are disrupted."