Roc Casagran: "With my children I did what I thought was normal for any parent to do"

BarcelonaRoc Casagran (Sabadell, 1980) has been publishing books for more than half his life. He debuted as a poet with The streets of the factories (Vienna, 2002), thanks to the Martí Dot award from Sant Feliu, and 22 years later – during which he has published fifteen more titles – he has received the Sant Jordi award thanks to We dreamed of an island, published this week by Univers and Òmnium. The novel is the first-person account of a documentary filmmaker, Carla, who addresses her partner, Óscar, at a delicate moment in his life: mourning for the death of his mother. This is the starting point of a story that intertwines the intimacy of three generations of the same family and explores stories and anecdotes from various islands that are thematically or metaphorically connected to the narrative material of the book.

Carla, protagonist and narrator of We dreamed of an island, he says: "The world is already terrible enough without writers aspiring to torture the reader. You can explain a tragedy, but it is necessary to leave a crack for hope, for tenderness, for love, for salvation, because, if not, what?" Do you share this position when you write a novel or a poem?

— When you tell a story, terrible things can happen, but you have to try to compensate the reader somehow. I want readers to be moved, but without wanting to cut their wrists. It is important to leave room for hope. Also for tenderness and love. After all, we all want to love and be loved. When I write literature, I try to follow this approach that Carla expresses in the novel.

Did you make your debut right after finishing your degree?

— No. First of all. I studied the first cycle of Catalan philology at the Autonomous University while working part-time. Then I moved on to literary theory and comparative literature.

Do you have a good memory?

— Yes. I have the feeling that I studied in the same way that I write now: because I wanted to.

The narrator within him took a little longer to be born than the poet.

— I wrote the first novel with Oleguer Presas, who was then playing for Barça. It was Road to Ithaca (Mina, 2006). Suddenly, everyone was paying attention to me. Lots of people came to the presentations. They showed us on TV. Now with Sant Jordi I have a similar feeling... With the difference that with Road to Ithaca I was 26 years old, and now I am 44.

Although he has never stopped publishing poetry, as a novelist there is a gap of almost a decade between Love off the map (Sowing, 2016) and We dreamed of an islandWhat has it brought back to narrative?

— Having a story and a way of telling it... Above all, having the time to devote to it, because I took a few months off. It was a happy time, because on Sunday night I thought: I can't wait for tomorrow, to drop the kids off at school and be able to devote myself to the novel.

He has been making a living for years as a secondary school teacher at the Sant Nicolau School in Sabadell.

— I've been here for seventeen years.

Is more Spanish spoken than Catalan in your school playground?

— No. There is still a fairly large number of Catalan-speaking families. The language in the playground is still ours. Even so, almost every week I go to speak at some institute in Catalonia about the novel Now that we are together [Column, 2012] and there I realize that there are more and more passive bilinguals, students who understand Catalan, but who answer you in Spanish even if you speak to them in Catalan.

Are you concerned about the state of Catalan?

— Yes. During the Process the question of language was put aside, but now it has come back with a vengeance. Language is what makes us Catalans and if we lose it I don't know if it's worth trying for independence again.

In the novel, one of Carla's children is born while her husband is at a demonstration. This scene takes place in the autumn of 2017.

— During the Process we suffered a lot, and we fought as hard as we could. The end of the Process has left us in mourning. It was hard to digest everything that ended up happening... The feeling is one of defeat: we were on the verge of achieving independence, we got the ball into the area, but we didn't finish.

In We dreamed of an island, social and political changes are a backdrop. What is important is the intimate life of the family. The relationship with the children and the partner. "We fall in love with the heart and become a couple with the head," we read.

— I wanted to talk about love in a relationship that isn't fireworks. Normally, we talk about it from both extremes: either when everything is wonderful, or from the dramatic breakup.

Here he tries to explain what life is like as a couple with children.

— There is a moment when you value being with someone who makes you feel good. There may be ups and downs, but there is complicity. I wanted to talk about that love of being on the same side of the trench.

It is a love that he knows, because he lives with a partner and has two children.

— It is necessary to accept and enjoy the moment of life that you are in. Sometimes I would like to pick up a ball and play football for four hours straight, like when I was little, but I know that if I did that, I might end up being taken to the mortuary afterwards.

In the novel there is a couple who tries all methods to have children except adoption because they want to pass on their genes to them.

— We give too much importance to genes. I have never felt so special that I thought that if I didn't pass my genes on to a child the world would end.

Instead, he will have been involved in raising his children, as Oscar does in the novel.

— With my children I have done what I thought was normal for any parent to do. I am there for them as long as necessary. I don't find that worthy of admiration.

In the penultimate chapter of the novel, we read: "What should we do with life? What gives it meaning? Children, a partner, friends, work? The mark we leave behind?" What gives meaning to your life?

— When you are a parent, you immediately respond that children: I want to see them grow and develop. If I did not love or care – for my partner, for my family or friends – then my life would have no meaning. I think about this on a personal level. On a more general level, it gives meaning to life to think that you can do something to make the world a little better.