"You can write about ETA and any other topic that moves us."

BarcelonaFor a few years now, ETA has been making its way into literature, but it's not so common to find it in a crime novel. The Last Princess (Planeta), by Alaitz Leceaga (Bilbao, 1982), is very present. If youBasque noir is a subgenre with the social, cultural, historical, and political conflict peculiarities of the Basque Country. The book by the successful Basque novelist meets many of the requirements. Everything takes place in the 90s, in Lemoiz, a town dominated by a nuclear power plant that has never worked, where ancestral rituals and Basque mythology exist, and the protagonist, who must solve the crime, has a neurodivergent disorder. Leceaga, a Basque author in Spanish, made the leap from writing on a blog to triumphing at the Frankfurt Fair with The forest knows your number (Ediciones B, 2019). Thousands of readers follow her, and she's working on a television series based on her stories.

How did you make the leap from blogging to publishing?

— It was almost like a natural extension. I've always read a lot, and it was easy to start writing my own stories online. I did it in chapters and had quite a few followers, who wrote to remind me to keep updating the story.

Recently, crime fiction from the northern Iberian Peninsula, written by Navarrese, Galician, and Basque authors, has enjoyed great success. Authors such as Dolores Redondo, María Oruña, Ledicia Costas, and Arantza Portabales have a huge following.

— We have a landscape that's a great ally for crime fiction: the rain, the ancient forests, a nature that can seem hostile... Ultimately, what draws us in is solving mysteries. Personally, I like chases, and in my novel, I wanted the hunters, the monster hunters, to be very present. My challenge is to get the reader pumping with adrenaline because they're about to hunt a killer.

Apart from the landscape, like Redondo, he also incorporates ancestral elements and Basque mythology.

— We have a wealth of legends, folklore, and myths. And it's not just heritage; it lives on. When I was little, the first stories I was told were about myths from the area. All this learning through stories has ended up forming part of my novels. There may be common elements within the'euskal noir, but it's a subgenre that encompasses many different stories. Each author has a different way of approaching reality, and the plots are very distinct.

The crime novel genre is booming and attracts many young readers. What does crime fiction tell us about the current climate, so uncertain and fraught with conflict?

— Crime fiction captures many current concerns. It has a social undertone, often related to current events, that reflects on the things that concern us. As authors, even unconsciously, we reflect these concerns through everything that happens around us.

He has not chosen a bucolic landscape, but a site dominated by a monster, which is an abandoned nuclear power plant.

— Yes, because it's a radical contrast. On one hand, you have a wonderful landscape, with all these deep, ancient forests and the Cantabrian Sea; and on the other, a huge abandoned nuclear power plant. And, on top of that, an oil platform in the middle of the sea. They're two worlds coexisting in a very small world.

ETA is very present in the book. It doesn't tiptoe around the topic of terrorism.

— When you sit down to write a novel set in 1992 in the Basque Country, you can't help but mention ETA. It's inevitable. It wouldn't have been believable not to. It would have been like talking about Barcelona in 1992 and not mentioning the Olympic Games. On the other hand, the perspective of someone in 2025 has little to do with that of someone from the 1990s, and I tried to write from the perspective of someone who lived through it at that time. I touch on other very sensitive topics, such as the protagonist's neurodivergent disorder.

Is it still a sensitive or difficult topic to discuss?

— I have an advantage, if you will: I've lived longer without the band than with it. For my generation, it's something distant in time. I think you can write about ETA and any other topic that moves us in some way.

At many moments, the protagonist, who has a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, is distressed by the thought that she has a monster inside her, because her father has killed eight people. What is the monster?

— There are two questions that loom over the book. To what extent the harm done by another person can affect you, and to what extent that harm is inherited. There's the protagonist's complicated childhood, an archaeological dig that connects us to the past and a supernatural evil, and the evil represented by a serial killer. And, above all, it's about how all of us can confront evil and chase monsters. My protagonist is impeccable and refuses to accept that evil is part of her life.

Do you think the disorder the protagonist suffers from is not sufficiently visible?

— I didn't want this disorder to define her, nor did I want the father figure to be reduced to that of a murderer. It was very important to me to create a realistic and respectful representation of people on the autism spectrum. There are many films and series that portray them as geniuses and highly intelligent people, but I was drawn to making it more realistic, and I was fortunate enough to speak with various organizations.