"At 60 years old, I want to encourage people to get closer to popular culture, to consume those works and shows, those concerts and exhibitions, which still exist." The writer Julián Sánchez Caramazana knows very well what he is talking about, because that culture is what, as a child, saved him.
"In addition to teaching me to read and write at an early age, my father exchanged pocket novels, bolsilibros, in those stores that no longer exist. I discovered that reading is living lives and writing is creating them, and that saved me from that environment of poverty and neighborhood gangs and bad vibes, from ending up in jail, or a lost junkie like the kids of that era." Young Julián read everything. "I was captivated by poetry, fantasy and horror genres, and metaphysics," and after studying BUP and COU at night at the Patronato Ribas in Valle Hebrón, where he had his first contacts with the CNT and networks of libertarian athenaeums, collectives, entities, venues, neighborhood and cultural associations, he paid for his university degree with scholarships and by working.
He sips a Reptilian Lovecraft´s Loves Craft, a craft beer dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft, his favorite horror author, one of the many he touches upon in his work. In the background, the voice of his admired Aurora Bertrán fills the air.
His professional life has been varied: "journalist, music critic, street, apartment or prison educator, and postal official", among many others. But, first and foremost, a writer, a storyteller who has expressed and published stories, "while continuing to read, write, win awards, work, fall into situations of extreme poverty, practice mail art, recite poetry, host programs on free radio stations, premiere shows, travel around Spain giving talks, conferences and more books read and written, poems, short stories, tales and micro-stories." Of his extensive career, his 35 years of work "around the cult of blood and the universal figure of vampirism" stands out, which has given rise to one of his most appreciated sagas: The Disappearance of the Vampire.
Like a crossroads
In the parishioner converges a deep popular heritage. A knowledge that his work as a social educator has entailed in his personal development. "I have known a neighborhood of Gràcia and a Barcelona already dead, murdered, that no longer exist and will never exist again. I have also known Gypsy culture very deeply, living with it and working within it. Likewise, I have also worked with a lot of delinquency."
To this personal human and cultural heritage is added, like a crossroads, his militancy in the front of Popular or genre Literature. "I am proud to have known so many authors of popular culture and the bolsilibro. People like Adolfo Quibus, Mercedes Gallardo, daughter of the great writer Juan Gallardo, known as Curtis Garland; Lem Ryan, Albert Cabrera, Ralph Barby, the signature behind which lies the binomial of authors formed by Àngels Gimeno and Rafael Barberà; the editor Pepe Cueto, people from Pulp from all over the country and others." In this remote alternative firmament, Julián's name shines with its own light. If only for his hyperactivity.
Just to mention some ongoing battles: while he is in conversation with several production companies for a possible adaptation of his novel Mercancía, he is working on the comic transposition of his saga La mujer de dos corazones, on a board and card game project of Allan Quatermain y la Diosa Blanca, on the promotion of his recent first detective novel, Falsos espejos, and on the launch of the brand new weird western El Clan de La Frontera (Matraca).
An almost spectral city
Like so many Barcelonans, the writer longs for the Barcelona that was: "the mix of cultures and the smell in the streets in autumn, with the rain, of a city that will never exist again, that past of games in the city, of people in chairs talking in the doorways, of real popular festivals, of schedules now impossible." Of the present, he loves "that there are still spaces where books are presented, concerts are given and culture is made."
--We can still talk about that in the present!
--Yes, but these are places that, little by little, the neighborhoods are denouncing so that they close and, thus, continue in their existence of living dead.
The parishioner is pained by "that citizenry that has tolerated Barcelona being almost annihilated in its popular aspect, destroying its basic and street culture, popular festivals, neighborhoods, allowing it to be the abominable showcase-city, of pure consumption, that it continues to be. I hate this holed Barcelona, full of cement, brick, junkies, crime and concrete, born from the plans of different and aberrant mayoralties. Today it is almost a spectral city."
--Well, as consolation, nothing better than our opulent gastronomic offer. We have a set menu, tapas, à la carte, sandwiches, combo plates. Everything very delicious.
Julián Sánchez Caramazana smiles under his thick white beard while sipping his Reptilian Lovecraft´s Loves Craft, and takes the floor:
--You have to be careful with this beer, because it has 14 degrees of alcohol, so today, between the conversation and this beer, some tapas are in order!
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