Paz Velasco de la Fuente: To crime, body and soul

"If you want, leave the radio on, but if we're going to get into a deep conversation, please put on some Leonard Cohen."

She arrives at the Bar with the first light of day, accompanied by "that silence one hears before the city wakes up" that she so adores. She never loses a smile that leads to immediate complicity with her interlocutor and honey-colored eyes that sometimes mislead, because they seem to indicate that everything is a game, although they reflect a soul that delves into the worst of what we are capable of being.

In 2018, Paz Velasco de la Fuente left law to dedicate herself "body and soul" to Criminology. "I stopped going into court, I stopped litigating to delve into violent crimes and their perpetrators, but not from a legal point of view, but from a criminological point of view, which goes much further than the punitive act."

Addicted to books ("I am a librópath"), a university professor with more than twenty articles, two essays, criminological dissemination in the press and media, and two ongoing investigations, this woman from Valladolid, based in Barcelona for two decades, considers herself "the best version of myself, or at least my neurons are" and is, at the same time, a key figure for the world of crime and detective fiction, which turns to her work to trace the characteristics and personalities of its characters.

Naturally hyperactive, Paz currently works on different fronts: "I teach at the University and supervise master's theses, I am a volunteer in a project of the Departament de Justícia de la Generalitat, I have my Podcast and my blog in El Taquígrafo, I have recorded a true crime for television, I give online conferences and I am waiting for my second book to be on the streets, starting March 17." She refers to Homo Criminalis (Planeta), an eagerly awaited volume that provides a detailed analysis of the new directions that crime and human aggression have taken, from female contract killing to so-called social cybercrime.

Starting over

Paz confesses to being "aware that, always, the passion for my work has stolen and steals time from those who love me, be it family, friends or my dog; but that's how I am." She smiles. "Those who understand it and those who truly love me stay with me."

--Perhaps it was that passion that made you hang up your gown to dedicate yourself entirely to criminology.

"It was very difficult to leave what I knew how to do so well. I had always wanted to be a lawyer and that was starting from scratch. Since 2005 I had combined law with criminology, but I could only give my heart to one profession. It took me years to make the decision, to leave my comfort zone." Finally, on September 18, 2018, the lawyer, "not the jurist," disappeared, and the criminologist was born, "in all her extension." The profound connoisseur and tireless explorer of the darkest areas of a segment of humanity that continues to delight in the smell of blood and the misfortune of others.

"I am proud of not having given up for an instant, of knowing that my fears and my limits were only mental," she adds before specifying that, often, she needs her time alone, which can last weeks, "to be alone with my soul."

A city where to mutate

"Barcelona has seen my personal and professional transformation. It has seen my strengths and weaknesses. It has been with me in difficult moments, but also in some of the best moments of my life. And, just for that, I will never abandon it," declares Paz, who recalls how she arrived in the city in 2000: "Evidently, I didn't know how to speak Catalan. I solved this quickly because after ten days I was going to Catalan classes and, after eight months, I enrolled in the University to study my second degree."

--This conversation cannot end like this! Will you come to lunch later?

--Okay, and I warn you that I'll want a portion. A menu is too much for me, and in the combined dish, things are combined that I don't like to combine.

And Paz Velasco de la Fuente casts a cheerful, sparkling, and conniving glance, before remembering that she will accompany said portion with a fruity white wine, perhaps a pre-Pyrenean Chardonnay. And that she will like it to be very cold.