Sandra Barneda's fiction beyond the spotlights

She is one of the most well-known faces on television, but one of the things that has given her the most embarrassment in life has been showing others what she wrote. "It's like a leap into the void because everything comes completely from you, it's your world, there are no shields," confesses Sandra Barneda (Barcelona, 1975) in an interview with The New Barcelona Post. The author began to dare with short stories and debuted in the world of fiction with Reír al viento (Suma de Letras, 2013). In less than ten years, she has already added six novels to the list, one of them, Un océano para llegar a ti (Planeta, 2020), finalist for the prize annually awarded by this publishing house. Her literary references are Jane Austen, Truman Capote, Hermann Hesse, William Shakespeare, and J.R.R. Tolkien. With more than 300,000 copies sold, the writer and presenter returns with Las olas del tiempo perdido (Planeta, 2022), "a tribute to friendship and to that small tribe with whom you discover everything and launch yourself into life."

Her latest book tells the story of a group of childhood friends who reunite after many years without seeing each other, separated by the premature death of one of the members. They return to Ajo, their summer village in Cantabria, "when their lives are at the foot of a cliff," a narrative nod to the landscape that predominates in the town. "All the settings I choose in my novels I try to make them connect a lot with their orography and atmosphere, and with the emotional tension I want to convey," explains the author. She still needs to set a novel in her hometown, which is briefly present in La tierra de las mujeres, a novel that is now being adapted into a series format with Eva Longoria and Carmen Maura. "Barcelona is always a very inspiring place," she anticipates.

But, as she emphasizes on several occasions, what she writes "is not autobiographical," considering that, for example, her summers were spent in a campsite on the Costa Brava. Whether in the mountains, on the beach, or in her grandparents' village, what is important for Las olas del tiempo perdido are the memories that holidays leave in anyone's mind, to which "we all return at one time or another to remember them."

If what matters is friendship, her latest novel is built around a group of 12 characters, "balanced and each with a lot of weight in the story," drawing a "very choral" plot. In fact, Sandra Barneda believes that what characterizes her most is her ability to outline the emotional body of each of the protagonists. "The stories are in the actions, but what I believe defines me is how I describe the journey of each of the characters," she points out. The wide variety of profiles is complemented by plot twists that make the book pick up "a frantic pace," also moving away from long descriptions that hinder reading. "It's a positive book that flows very quickly. You can finish it right away despite its length ---507 pages---," she maintains.

The configuration of the characters is one of the central parts of her creative process. She starts by deciding what she wants to tell, delimiting it very well, "and, from there, I build the story." She thinks about it mentally, with notes in notebooks or voice memos, "from a more generic idea to gradually bringing it down to earth." When she starts writing, she organizes herself by weeks, combining writing with television schedules, and dedicates no less than five hours a day to her books.

Now being the host of one of the most successful television programs in recent years, La Isla de las Tentaciones, Sandra Barneda assures that she has not thought about being inspired by all the experiences and learnings that the participating couples live. "I could do it, but I haven't considered it. Obviously, there's a lot to get from there," she explains. The modern melodramas with drinks that are experienced in this reality show will have to wait to be immortalized in a novel, despite already having a luxury chronicler. "Surely I will use it in some story, for profiles and for what you can feel, but it's not something that I unconsciously say: 'I'm going to write about this'," she adds. For now, although it is not about tests of love, disappointments and tempters, the author is already writing a new story, without revealing the details yet. We will have to let time pass to get to know them and perhaps hear "there are more images."