Ane Guerra: The unstoppable flow of stories

Leaning on the bar, she smiles as she casts her blue gaze upon the intense red of the freshly served Bitter Kas. "I imagine that the great turning point of my life, going back to the primordial, was when my family decided that I was the reading child and they stuffed me with books." Ane Guerra sips the first drink, before concluding: "That has brought us here."

Born and raised in the Gipuzkoan town of Urretxu ---"my family has been in the same baserri since 1682"---, she studied Journalism in Pamplona. From there, the crisis led her to London until, in 2014, "the desire to have some quality of life and an editorial project brought me to Barcelona". Her life is an infinite sum of stories: those she reads, those she thinks, those she writes and those she transmits through the classes she teaches in university centers like Elisava. Or through the content she creates through her agency, Letraherida. Or through the programs of her podcast, Women at work. An unstoppable flow.

She has worked in radio and television writing humor scripts, she has collaborated in numerous media outlets. She has invented, she has explained, she has written or narrated. And she continues to do so, because she doesn't know how to stay still, nor does she need to. Because stories never stop flowing.

She has just published a book, her debut, a female pulp western full of humor and bad temper, of hilarious characters and surreal situations, La maldición del Sandungo (Proyecto Estefanía), "and I am in the tortuous process of writing another one." Meanwhile, she has had time to translate Días lentos, malas compañías (Colectivo Bruxista), the dizzying sentimental and carnal memoir of 1960s Hollywood, narrated in the first person by artist and writer Eve Babitz.

--- Hey, and do you fit so much in your head?

--- Well, the truth is I have a terrible memory---, she replies, laughing.

The decisions life makes

The patron has the feeling that, rather than making decisions herself, life has been making them for her, and she has merely adapted to them. Listening to her colleagues when, as a gothic teenager in her native Urretxu, "I didn't get any disastrous piercing, which I'm glad about." Or when her friend Andoni Beristain, "a photographer and with whom we edited the magazine La Monda, which was the reason for my move to Barcelona, encouraged me to move near him." The answer, usually, was: "Is it this now? Okay, go ahead."

--- But don't take credit away from yourself, because you've done many things with your own judgment. You can be proud!

Ane affirms, but only up to a point. "What I've been is privileged, because my parents could help me while I had to do unpaid internships... long live Journalism!" she laughs. "The thing is ---she continues--- that I'm proud to be their daughter. But zero credit on my part, there."

Perhaps trying to avoid that pressure of doing things dragged by the inertia of others' decisions, with the will to preserve her own space, to give quarter and oxygen to her judgment, the writer confesses that she is now "learning to say no to more things, because first of all I want to read again with and for pleasure."

--- And how is that going for you?

--- Ugh! It's very hard for me!

Living installed in a childhood summer

As a child, the parishioner spent her summers near Salou. "Accustomed to the green and gray and the incessant rain of Euskal Herria, coming to Catalonia was like going to another planet, one where the weather was constantly good. If you haven't lived it, it's hard to understand." That's why, when she moved to Barcelona ten years ago, for her "it was a bit like coming to live in my childhood summers. With its architecture, its light, its climate, its palm trees... I love that feeling!"

--- It's very nice here.

"It's the best city in the world, or it would be if it were less hot, a little emptier of tourists and people who come to live it as if it were an amusement park, were cheaper, the beaches were cleaner and people could access decent and affordable housing. In any case, I think sometimes we forget that we live in a beautiful place, don't we?" she concludes, and finishes the last sip of her Bitter Kas.

--- Beautiful and where you eat very well, like for example in this Bar, if you fancy having lunch, it's already time. We have a menu, tapas, sandwiches, combined dishes…

Ane Guerra can't contain her laughter. She's clear.

--- Combined dish, without a doubt. It's wonderful to be able to snack on everything at the same time!