Iván Guevara was 28 years old when he made the decision to cross the pond and leave Buenos Aires to come to Barcelona.
"I had already been writing scripts for comics for three or four years that were published in the Italian magazines Skorpio and Lanciostory and I had also started writing for El Víbora and Kiss Comix, from here. In a way, I was clear that I wanted to dedicate myself to this, so one day I decided to come and live where the work was. I don't know if at that moment I was too aware that I was leaving everything behind, my girlfriend, my friends, my job. But in the end, that's what happened. I started a new life and exchanged it for the old one."
The writer and screenwriter interrupts his story to sip his Fernet Branca with Coca-Cola, "an old habit that has accompanied me since Argentina and that I have passed on to my best friends here."
On the radio, Dick Dale and his Del-Tones work hard with the pounding rhythm of Jungle Fever while Iván resumes speaking: "A few years later, the European comic market began its decline, but I was already rooted here. I alternated the most diverse jobs: bookseller, editor of a local magazine, in a marketing company... Until I started working as a cook, my other hobby." Since then, he combines his work behind the stoves with his passion: writing and editing his work.
The imprint of comics and Pulp literature
"Until a few years ago I said I was a comic book writer, because that was what I knew best how to do. Thanks to the training and experience I have acquired, now I can call myself a writer without blushing too much. Likewise, I still retain many elements of comics in what I write: visual images to condense the action or the use of the narrative structure of the script itself, with its dynamism and its ellipses. This made it so that, naturally, I ended up finding a place within the type of literature known as Pulp," explains the regular who already has two novels to his name: Una noche de veinte mil años, a delicious science fiction bolsilibro, and Bodas de plomo, "a story of criminals set in 1980s Barcelona that we could place within the hard boiled genre."
The author has also published a couple of compilation volumes with his stories, "but they are no longer available because I have revised, augmented, and re-gathered them by genre. The result is two other books that are about to appear. One of them, between noir, terrifying, and urban, will bring together all the stories I wrote set in a fictional country called Genteovejuna. The other will be called Infinitos infinitos, will combine twelve illustrated stories of science fiction and dark fantasy and, if all goes well, will see the light during 2022."
Regarding the imaginary Genteovejuna, this will also be the setting for the new novel the writer announces he is working on, "and which will be a little longer than those I have written so far," he anticipates.
--- You are also in charge of the science fiction story collection called Pandorum, aren't you?
--- Yes, they are anthologies of science fiction stories by different authors in pocket format, which I run with fellow writer Tony Jim, and with which we revive the Pulp spirit of kiosk literature, both in the theme of the stories and in the format of books at popular prices.
With one title from this collection already published and the next two in the Verkami phase with a logically good public response, the regular customer vindicates with this project "the care of the editorial work of books, so often forgotten lately. I like to work on books not only in their intellectual content, but as the aesthetic object they are. Each story needs a different design and format treatment, as important for the reading experience as the text itself. Perhaps that's why I've never managed to get past the first few pages of any e-book."
The chosen city
"Barcelona is the city I have chosen to live in and I like it for the art that breathes in its architecture, its venues, the conservation of its monuments and historical sites, its theaters, its music, its people. In this aspect, it is very similar to Buenos Aires, although Barcelona has the decency to go to sleep at a certain hour," explains the regular, who assures that what he most appreciates about the city is that, "even being large and cosmopolitan, it does not have the disadvantages of big cities. Life is lived with greater tranquility."
With that conception of a city more read about than lived in a childhood that happened far away, the author researches extensively to set some of his stories in a bygone Barcelona.
Barcelona is very similar to Buenos Aires, "although Barcelona has the decency to go to sleep at a certain hour"Of the present one, he suspects "that idea that it seems like a city that is not yet finished. All the time there are crews of workers breaking up a street or tearing down a building to build another. Now I understand that this is what progress is about. The only thing I wish is that they at least have the good sense not to destroy so many green spaces or beautiful old buildings, although, as I told you, I understand that this is what progress is about…", he reflects.
--- What can no longer progress because it is insurmountable is our gastronomic offer. We have a bit of everything and it's very delicious: tapas, raciones, menu, sandwiches, combined dishes…
The writer Iván Guevara then gives way to his alter ego, the cook, and, without needing to think much, stroking his goatee and smiling with his mouth and eyes, he laughs heartily before uttering:
--- In a bar like this, ración. No less than four small plates on the table. Everything savory and, of course, bitter mate.