Lourdes Olivé Bonet: "The stories in the book are familiar and I use anecdotes that have happened in Espluga"

Lourdes Olivé Bonet was born in L'Espluga de Francolí in 1973, but has been living in Barcelona for years, where she has developed her professional career – with stays in other countries – after graduating in economics and business sciences and training in coachingThe town of Conca de Barberà and his family have inspired him to write his first novel, The secret of harmony, published by La Musca.

You already wrote as a child.

— I started writing by accident, because at school, in Espluga de Francolí, we have always had a tradition of literary competitions, with the Baldiri Reixach Prizes. They forced you to enter and when I was seven or eight I won third prize for poetry. And I thought I would be a writer. Dreams as a child. At home I wrote poems by hand and then transcribed them on the typewriter using two pieces of carbon paper. I had a copy for the publisher who would publish them. My father told me that in the Poblet monastery they printed books and I thought that one day I would go to Poblet, show them my poems and they would make a book for me.

But he published his first book when he was over fifty.

— I wrote about fifteen poems over the course of about three years, but at some point I realized that I wasn't good enough, that I didn't write well. I let go of that idea. I've always had the desire to write, but also the fear of doing so.

This wish finally comes true.

— I am a mother and one of my friends who is also a mother started taking a course on emotional parenting, on personal growth. I wasn't very interested in this topic because I have always been a very practical person, but my friend enrolled me in this course, which was to help your children with better parenting, but deep down this course helped to work on self-esteem. Women of my time were taught a lot about serving others, with that message that you are not enough. In one of the sessions, the facilitator suggested that I do a regression to childhood.

What happened?

— I closed my eyes, let myself be guided, and remembered the poems and that girl who wanted to be a writer. And the rest of the twelve sessions we did always began with "When will you start writing the book?" I hated it because it confronted me with myself. Maybe I can and I'm not trying? This planted a seed and a friend of mine recommended the Ateneu Barcelonès and its writing courses to learn. The narrative course I signed up for in 2021 ended with a novel project. That's more serious than it seemed! I was inspired by one of my grandfather's sisters, an interior monologue, which I wrote just like that. At the Writing School they loved it and told me to drop the thread. My goal at the Ateneu was to learn to write and not to publish a novel. Everyone there had their novel in their head and I had a project that for me was a tool to learn to write. I did what I could, I had fun in the process, and when people talked about how to publish a novel, I tuned out. Everyone was so obsessed with how to publish. With my novel, I wanted to discover my style and be authentic, which is very difficult to achieve.

Where does the title come from?The secret of harmony?

— It would be a spoiler if I said so. Harmony It's a word I like a lot. In this book there are values like peace, freedom, idealism for a better world, that everyone has access to education, equality for women... All this with harmony would be fantastic. In the novel there are family conflicts and harmony would also be very good. The secret has to do with the protagonist, who is an idealist and hates lies and has a very strong sense of justice since she was little. Life catches up with her and she will have to live with a secret. These are the inconsistencies of life.

Is there a lot of you in Camelia, the protagonist?

— I dedicate the book to my aunt, a sister of my grandfather, who was very present in my life when I was growing up. I don't know if there is me, her or the women in my family who have that fighting character and that sense of justice. I think it all comes together a bit: those ideals, those conversations I had or didn't have and I made up. I got the "you can do it, get ahead" and women's equality from her.

Where does the novel take place?

— It takes place in a village. I didn't want to name it Espluga, because that would have forced me to be very precise with the names of the streets and families and people would start thinking about surnames. I tried to make it neutral, but I grew up in Espluga and my stories are from there and people from the village will find familiar places.

How was the documentation process?

— In order to write, I needed to feel safe, and I got that safety from the historical framework, from putting myself in that era. Many things are family stories, but the rest has been a lot of research. Above all, I have used old books and the newspaper archives. The Vanguard and linked what was happening in the novel with what was happening in the world. I found a book by my uncle, Miquel Olivé Porté, who led the mobilization of day laborers in Conca de Barberà. There I saw how they stood up to the system.

The novel was published by La Musca, a publishing house in Espluga.

— When I have an offer from another publisher to publish it, I call the village bookshop and ask them how many copies they think they could sell in L'Espluga. And they ask me if I publish with a small publisher because I didn't do it with La Musca. They put me in touch with one of their managers, Marta Amigó, and we met. I passed it on to her and she liked it. And I thought it could be a zero-kilometre book. The stories are very familiar and I use anecdotes that have happened in my village. I have done this novel with a lot of love. And I saw that La Musca would also publish it.

He is preparing a second novel, which he says will be more difficult than the first.

I think so too. I thought that if you had written a novel you were already a writer, but no. I am at the same point as when I started, but I no longer have that element of procrastination called Writing School. I have many things in my head, very beautiful stories, different fromThe secret of harmony, but it's scary to put it back on.