Mari Carmen Sinti: To be surprised is to live

"I have reached an age where I shut up much less and speak much more. What do I mean? That I don't have to put up with nonsense that I used to put up with, and I feel good when I say what I feel, without keeping it deep inside my gut. And I like to do it calmly and with good words." A few seconds of silence pass. "What I mean is that I surround myself with people I appreciate and with whom I want to share my life and my world, whether for a while or much longer."

It's early in the morning, and Mari Carmen Sinti, an irreparable early riser, is leaning against the bar, cold Cacaolat in hand, while in the background the notes of The Gabriels' Love and hate in a different time fill the air with a magnetic intensity full of Soul.

"What I have always been is a mother ---she continues---. That doesn't change. The rest depends on when, where, for whom, what I intend, what I feel, what they give me... There are as many selves as circumstances. I know I will do many more things from today until I die, and in each of them I will be different. One of the things that characterize me is my eagerness to learn. As long as things unknown to me surprise me, I will want to live." For now, the pleasantly surprised are her readers who, after her debut with Sudor frío in 2018, have just confirmed that that was not a one off and are preparing to read, enjoy, live, the author's recently published second reference: En el fondo de mis ojos (Vencejo).

Director of the veteran program Lletres i música, on Sant Cugat radio, and promoter of various reading clubs and other literary initiatives, the parishioner's story is peculiar: "after being widowed when I was in my early fifties, I decided to reinvent myself and started by submitting a story to a contest. Sometimes we do things that we will later consider important, but without yet realizing their relevance. However, at the moment of sending that first email where I attached that story with a pseudonym and another parallel one with the sealed envelope, I already felt that something unique was beginning." Something that has led her to be respected and much loved in various literary and cultural fields.

Coming out victorious from the obstacle course

"Like everyone, I have several turning points that have been drawing the skyline of who I am at this moment. Anyway, I think what I am most proud of is having raised my children by jumping over all the obstacles I have encountered along the way, which have been many and, on occasion, even without any grace," explains Mari Carmen, sipping her drink.

--- Did you never think of sending it all to hell?

--- Of course. Moments of really wanting to throw in the towel, of asking karma what it was about, and of crying out to the universe to give me a break and share with someone else. But we were overcoming one after another the inconveniences of a single-parent family without anyone's help. From those times, I remember the bad, the very bad, but, above all, how happy we became.

All this background has ended up shaping an tireless cultural activist. A lover of reading hundreds of books and listening to a thousand songs ("I'm quite eclectic, but I haven't reached such a degree as to let a station choose what I'm going to listen to," she proclaims), who pours this great passion into her radio program, her books and reading clubs and, of course, into keeping her mind working, "devising new stories that meet the requirements I demand of myself."

Barcelona, yes, but no longer in the city

Daughter of a family of Andalusians who arrived in the city in the 40s "with nothing but the clothes on their backs," the writer recalls the "extraordinary things my father told me about that arrival, that journey, and those times when that family of more than twenty people, mostly children and teenagers, had to survive. I would give anything to witness that entry into the neighborhood through Calle Ample, which at that time must have been at most cobbled, with the cart pulled by a donkey and them, the suitcases, the animals, all on top of the wagon."

--- And you were born here?

--- I arrived in Barcelona as a child, but I feel so adopted that, being Andalusian, Spanish, and European, I feel Catalan above all else. I wouldn't live anywhere else. I have my job here, my children here, and almost all my friends here. However, my future plans are different...

--- In what sense?

--- "In the sense that Barcelona yes, but not capital, but province," she replies, enigmatically, finishing her Cacaolat and leaving behind breakfast time to make way for vermouth time and, perhaps, lunch time, taking advantage of the conspicuous and succulent gastronomic offer available to her.

"I like to pick at things, so I like it when at a table someone says: 'should we order a few things to snack on and then everyone orders their main course?' I love a little bit of everything. The same as a buffet," she explains. And suddenly a smile full of nostalgia lights up her face as she narrows her eyes and digs into her memory.

--- My mother used to tell me: 'you put so little on your plate because if you see it full you get tired'. And then, if I was still hungry, I would repeat. She reminded me: 'you are like your grandfather, who didn't like to eat only one thing'.

--- And do you remember that?

--- My grandfather died when I was a child, so I don't remember that. Only that he was very thin, ---she smiles tenderly as she decides what to accompany the freshly served white vermouth with.