History of a beach day
They say it's never too late to make great discoveries. I admit I haven't been very interested in graphic novels until now, but today I want to recommend one: Regreso al Edén, by the Valencian Paco Roca. A friend recommended it to me, knowing my fondness for old family photos.
The novel was published six years ago and is a recreation of the author's mother, Antonia, and through her, it offers a precise, quite depressing but very affectionate portrait of a large majority of Spanish families in the post-war years.
What hooked me is that the entire story of Regreso al Edén grows from a photograph that Antonia always kept as a treasure. It's a family photo from a day at the beach, specifically at Nazaret beach. It was taken in 1946. Paco Roca tenderly observes this photograph and begins to pull a thread and weave a story that became big and goes far beyond his mother and his family.
For me, the most beautiful thing about this novel is that the photograph in question did not encapsulate a happy memory. Precisely, that day, at the beach, Antonia's siblings had a fierce argument. They were a very humble family, dominated by the sexism of the father and brothers. When one of the girls is about to announce that she is getting married soon, the happy news is cut short by the reproaches from one of the brothers: “¿Sabes cómo te llaman todos? La nodo, porqué estás al alcance de todos los españoles”. The beach day that had been planned as a family celebration ends up being frustrated.
And yet, decades later, when Antonia is very old, she just wants to keep that photograph close. Looking at it, she imagines that the image projected is that of a happy family on the beach. And so it is that she – who knows the truth perfectly – imagines that it could have been like that. That it could have been a happy day at the beach. That her family, in other circumstances than dictatorship and poverty, could have had moments of happiness.
Regreso al Edén portrays the life of this family, marked by economic precariousness and the violence of the father towards his wife and daughters. The entire novel is steeped in deep sadness, but also in the great sensitivity conveyed by the author's gaze towards his mother.
As with the reality it portrays, Paco Roca's work is full of grays, browns, and muted tones. The exception is the page where the protagonist imagines what a beach day might have been like for a family more fortunate than hers. Fantasy adds blues and yellows to the drawing that closely resemble happiness.
On the back cover of the book, we find the original photograph: a mother dressed in black and four of her children, seated around a folding table, with the sea in the background. Only the girls smile timidly, and we readers know, after having read the novel, that they are not real smiles.
Until now, I knew that photographs can excite our memory or, conversely, mummify memories. But now, thanks to Paco Roca, I know that they can also offer us the possibility of recreating with imagination what could have been and was not.