Llucia Ramis (Palma 1977) has just won the Premi Anagrama de Novel·la for Les Possessions, a "ghost story" in which, as in her three previous novels, she flirts with generational and autobiographical chronicle based on her obsessions, her geography (Mallorca-Barcelona) and certain life circumstances such as the past crisis (supposedly already overcome) that took away more than just certainties.
A writer and journalist, Llucia has become a privileged chronicler of Barcelona's literary universe, first from El Mundo and now from La Vanguardia. And although she has a critical eye, and sometimes sharpens her keyboard, she also has a contagious laugh with which she seems to have managed to be liked by everyone.
IT'S EASIER TO FALL IN LOVE IN WRITING
You are critical of your generation. My generation believes it deserves what it has, but it doesn't fight to keep it. As if everything came given and we never had to rise up. And that's why the situation is what it is. We are realizing too late that we should have reacted sooner.
You have gone from being a chronicler to being one of the protagonists of Barcelona's literary life... I became a writer, if you "become" a writer, because I am shy... Now I have to be in front, when I had always liked to be behind. It seems contradictory. One writes because one believes one can control what one is writing. As a child, I was pathologically shy. I had problems relating. Even a teacher spoke with my parents because I was not as sociable as I was supposed to be at my age. I spoke little, very little, and I was very embarrassed. My parents are psychologists and, of course, they had to educate me to stop being shy. Writing is my way of reaching where I could not reach verbally. But you trick yourself... First, because when you write you are justifying yourself in some way, you are constructing a narrative. Reality is not linear and, on the other hand, what you write is linear. For example, it is easier to fall in love in writing than to do it face to face, because you don't have the same responsibility. Even if you get very involved, it is still a written text. The fact of having the feeling that you control, that you observe in the background and describe what you want, protects you. On the other hand, when you are the protagonist, you are exposing yourself, you can no longer make others see things as you see them, but rather they are the ones who look at you and draw their own conclusions.
Shame is often understood as a lack of interest or antipathy. I believe that shame is a system for maintaining power. I put it in Les possessions. Shame is natural, everyone feels it, but you can manipulate it to achieve certain objectives. This is seen with the Church, which creates modesty, shame for one's own body and for certain attitudes, and thus preserves its power. On the other hand, in economics there is no shame because, if there were, wealth would not be generated. You should not have scruples, which would be a form of shame. And in the era of exhibitionism in which we live, of individualism, of spectacle, shyness is clearly counterproductive, because you are hiding in a world where nothing is hidden. It is assumed that writers write so that they are not seen, so that the world is seen as we see it, but that we are not seen, for that there is already the book... But the market is made in such a way that you have to do the show anyway to sell your product. It is very contradictory.
In an interview for TheNBP, the poet Pere Rovira told us that he writes to deceive death, to keep it away… Why do you write? The older you get, the more you try to deceive death. In this book there is a scene where I explain that older people have insomnia at night because at that moment death sleeps but fear does not. And fear wakes you up because it gets bored and keeps reminding you that you are approaching the end of your life. Death is a very interesting literary material and, furthermore, thinking about it is very necessary to understand what life is. Writing, in my case, is also a mechanism to understand things. Everything is much easier for me to understand when I see it written.
I HATE BARCELONA!
Mallorca and Barcelona are the two main protagonists of your novels. Tell me about them… Mallorca is like the mother. You love a mother the same no matter how much she changes. And she is always there. They can do a thousand and one shitty things to her, they can destroy her, but she is your mother and she will always be there. Barcelona, on the other hand, is like my lover. You don't really know why you're still by her side… (Laughs) I hate Barcelona! I hate it so much and, at the same time, I love it very much. It's a very strong contradiction. I find it to be an incredibly boring city, I don't understand its lack of cultural restlessness, when it has had so much… I don't quite understand why it doesn't protect itself more against speculation and tourism… Why is it sold so cheap? Why is it so insecure? On the one hand, it seems very conceited and on the other, it is completely insecure. It's unbearable. It's like an old lady who has aged badly and has had fifty thousand surgeries… And each time she looks more like all the ladies who have had fifty thousand surgeries (guffaws)… And at the same time, it's wonderful. It has the perfect dimensions, the climate is very pleasant, it has the sea (and all of us who come from an island need to be able to see the sea, even if we never go). It's a city I knew much more fun, not because I was younger, but because it really was. I find it very boring and it's a city that could be culturally very powerful, it has all the elements… But it doesn't manage to be truly modern and open. Nor do I understand the lack of culture in the media and the lack of transversality… How is it possible that theater people don't know what's happening in the art world and writers don't know what musicians are doing… There's an enormous disconnection between the different cultural spheres when we all are part of the same thing.
Do you think that in other eras there has been a more powerful, cosmopolitan, and interconnected cultural activity? Of course. This happened in Barcelona in the 70s. That's how it has been explained to me… I don't think the Barcelona of the 70s was better than it is now. It was much dirtier and in the 80s there were junkies. It's true that that era has been idealized. But, as far as culture is concerned, such a powerful movement was generated that we are still talking about it now… Where is the gauche divine of today? Where is punk? Where are all those people? How and who will write about the current era? (Laughs. Lots of laughs)