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La escritora Mercedes de Vega: "Esta novela es un alegato de libertad, en contra de las dictaduras y el pensamiento único" · Autoras de palabra con Rosa

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Michel Aguirre leaves his beloved Guernica on fire in the past. The road narrows
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towards an uncertain future and disappears by the rear- view mirror of the military
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truck that takes it to the front of Bilbao, between the vegetation of a
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cold spring that breaks wild especially to the region outside the war that extends throughout
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the country, to fight to die for us Cadiz. In the light of
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the Eclipse, Mercedes vega in word authors with welcome pink. Thank you so
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much. Nice to be with you, so happy to have read you,
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to meet you in person. I' ve read a little bit of maybe
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from the beginning of your book. Only with this entry I don' t
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know, I know that I' m going to find deep characters, yes,
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very deep, very marked characters that happen to him many things, because
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they are characters that live very important events. O s s s s s
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is stans s ns our Spain. Also, well, the novel covers a
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time frame of forty years, from the year thirty- seven to seventy-
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seven seventy- nine, which is where the story of two characters who are
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going to live all that time ends. It convulses all that difficult time of
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war, but it is no longer war, because of the war there are
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two or three chapters. But that war is too much of a claw.
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Yeah, and that war is gonna mark my two characters forever. It is
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going to unite them irremediably until the end of their lives and the two are
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going to transform how it transforms into society, because the novel is a portrait
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is a portrait of us, of our Spain and of our evolution. And
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of course, they' re very powerful characters, very strong, brave,
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they' re almost heroes, but they' re also villains. It depends
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on the situation they have to live on. I believe that we have never,
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never prevailed so much a grey and its nuances in this period of time
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that you mark in the life of Spain. Of course, there' s
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absolutely no grays. This is a moment of absolute polarization. A war appears
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this good one is. There is a war because there is a failed coup
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d'état and then in Spain it is completely divided tragically, and my
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characters are a six- year- old girl who lives in La Mancha,
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on a farm. His family is a coup family and the mud is the
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opposite. He is a boy, a sixteen- year- old teenager who
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leaves Guernica to go to fight the Iron Belt, to defend Bilbao and defend
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a Kadi from the national troops that are already in the northern campaign. And,
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from those historical moments, from what is the northern campaign of the Iron
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Belt, because it is not an incredible work of military engineering, very interesting
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that I explain it as it was formed today and realized, the Iron Belt
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and my Gudari, my boy from Guernica, is there in a nest of
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machine guns, at the moment when his land and his village is bombarded by
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the German army and Italian legionaries, and he leaves everything running out, gets
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to his Guernica, finds it burned and well, then there we say that
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I start the novel with that bombing and explain it from a military point of
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view. You start with that bombing and you also talk about the one that
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happened earlier in Durango and the one in Durango and one wonders. They wonder
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if that horror can be repeated in leadership. In addition, you tell where
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the skin stands to the reader and changes the life of Misel aguerre. It
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' s that scene we' re going to talk about now. You'
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re precisely provoking. What if it tells you the skin, not precisely because
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life, the stories make them, the characters, the characters on foot and
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people who have lived suggested that they are life stories. Exactly, they'
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re life stories. And well, when your life is tragic, your story
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is tragic and then, well, it has a force that bursts into it
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all, as it sweeps away all of Mary' s story as well.
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So, in Mitchell' s case, this child who' s going to
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fight, who doesn' t know where he is, who practically doesn'
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t know how to shoot a rifle, a machine gun, because he'
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s in the Iron Belt that' s also going to be absolutely destroyed by
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the national troops, because it' s that inside, that' s to
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say, the building teachers who made the entire belt and bunkers belonged to the
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fifth column and then the plans are passed. And it is no longer that
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the Iron Belt falls because it had a deficit in its construction, that it
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wanted to be a kind of maginot line, but also that the planes have
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them the nationals and penetrate the iron belt through the fifth sector and destroy it
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completely. Then they take you Bilbao in a matter of two days. And,
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of course, with all that misfortune, Mitchell runs out because he can
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' t do anything else. Feet so that I love you runs out and
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there the story, all the things that were avaptated to get to, to
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get out, to get out, to search for almost all the lower Strip
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of the Pyrenees, escaping from all the national troops until it reaches Catalonia.
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And if he lists what he' s going to do, he can'
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t do anything else. He doesn' t just know how to fight to
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save life. And well, he enlists what he is in the People'
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s Army of the Republic as a militiaman and from there he leads him to
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the battle of the pit And he finds himself and finds himself in the battle
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of the pit of the front that was in Toledo, in a brigade of
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a communist who welcomes him as a son. No. And that' s
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where the novel begins, because one thing is going to happen, that,
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that is, that brigade one night because it seizes a fine, a farm
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of landowners whose father is one of the coupsmen, because his brother was trenched
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in the Alcázar of Toledo. Then, evidently, when the Republican troops arrive
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in the area, they go after him. And then, on that night,
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they seize the estate, arrest the father, the mother, the company
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nun and arrest them. They take them a few kilometers away in a truck,
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to the municipality of Camuñas, that there is a silver mine at the
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mine and there they kill them, They kill them and throw them in the
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well at the moment when there is a moon eclipse, a moon eclipse that
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is seeing their six- year- old girl, who has stayed on the
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farm with her sick little brother through the window and let us say that,
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of course all this under the light of the clear eclipse, here we speak
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already, we begin to talk about literature, a little symbol, also a
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po or that magic happens in the tragic moments. There is a clear eclipse,
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in eclipses they do not give light, they give shade and under that
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shadow my story is written, under that shadow of that moon that is said
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to be hiding in a great crime that is unfolding in the minilla. In
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fact, there are still all the bodies that fell in the mine, that
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were thrown into the mine, there are people who were murdered all over the
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area. That one from La Mancha is still over six hundred. It'
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s possible, possibly there' s more. It' s six hundred,
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yeah, more or less. So, the two characters with which they are
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the thread do represent the two Spain let' s say. I completely believe
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it' s a way to count the civil war. I' ll say
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as it was. I mean, the victors weren' t the only victims,
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not the last ones, not the only ones attacked, and the supposed
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victors weren' t either. I also don' t think it' s
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a way of telling it very boldly, but very real, of course,
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because everyone here doesn' t win exactly, that is, it' s
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the tragedies of life. In fact, this novel is a claim of freedom,
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against dictatorships, against unique thinking, against violence, against wars, of
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what that means for the destruction of people, of lives, of families.
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So this novel symbolizes that, i e, The two are two, The
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two are opposites, i e, it is a handsome novel, as it
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is also a story of opposites. They both belong to different worlds, but
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it is the worlds on which they have had to live exactly. The novels
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are world creators, that is, I create a world with a novel,
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because I don' t like the one I have and because I don'
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t like this world, I make up one, but I make up a
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world too, which is the world under the light, in the eclipse,
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which is ours too to make it known. And it' s a novel
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written, not for anyone who knows everything I talk about the novel, but
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for all people who don' t know it. And for these young people
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and now that well, you need to know, you think you need to
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know, of course, but you think I take advantage of what you just
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said, they want to know. They' re so curious to call him
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softly, so look. I think so, because you can' t boast
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about all the young people, the whole generation of now can' t be
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encompassed. As in a unique thought. We' d be very wrong.
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There are many youths, there are many types of people and we have kids
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and we have people who are twenty years old, fifteen, eighteen, thirty,
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who know a lot, who read a lot, who are very informed,
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who like history very much. Then we have others who don' t,
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who are more on another issue. Not that of networks of a very
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superficial world, of Joe' s image. We live in a very egol
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world at right now it' s not me, it' s me and
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I need social recognition. There is a current like this, not that comes
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all from social networks, but within that also serve the networks and also serves
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this movement that there is image, the golatra for knowledge, for history and
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to know more in all this I have traveled that you said at the beginning
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of one of your characters, where begins what is defending, how it flees
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and how far it goes, that we will not tell, how far it
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goes. In the end, in the end, but there has been loss,
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the loss of his mother, of his mistress, who said beautiful tall
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with one blue eye and another brown, the nicest seller on the market is
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that with these descriptions, who won' t love this woman, how she
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loses her mother, how she loses her brother and how. This has to
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generate some like little revenge. No, but look, it' s funny,
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because I' ve been trying to make two very opposite characters. He
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could be an avenger, like at the end of it. She is avengers,
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yes, throughout all her lives, she is marked by the fact of
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the murder of her parents and clearly wins the war. Then, of course
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and in addition, she' s stuck in power, because she becomes a
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relevant woman within the national and intelligent movement, something very intelligent, with a
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lot of inner pain. Yes, a lot of shadow takes full advantage,
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a lot of shadow in his heart, a lot of darkness. Then she
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' s an avenger, but he couldn' t be an avenger. He
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could' ve said good all my mom, his mother, she' s
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a widow woman, she' s a woman who has a cowshed and has
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two cows, which is all her fortune and well, she paints a little
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there with Mitchel. The rural world, yes, that rural world, charming,
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affectionate, attached to the earth, to the most primitive values, and
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that world embodies it in them. No. And Mitchell, instead of being
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a hurt man, is a lost man who hears what continually. In the
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novel it is a continuous escape. He is the archetype of the exiled man,
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of the persecuted man, of the man who has lost everything, of
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the man who continually escapes from all the evil that is happening to him.
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But he is an idealist because he seeks freedom. He is also a communist
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idealist, because, of course, he ends up in the Communist Party by
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chance not and becomes a convinced communist, because of course he ends up in
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Moscow and he ends up doing that journalist in Moscow and on radio and at
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the Institute. Of course, then, the transformation of it is a transformation
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like the transformation of it. So do I. Yes, they are two
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characters that are going to be transformed throughout history, during those forty years that
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unite them and of course, Mitchell Mitchel, of course, he is the
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archetype of the good man. He' s a good person, he'
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s not a criminal. She may become a criminal without being a criminal,
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but neither is she. That is, then Michel represents that good man,
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that man who tries to escape from everything that happens to him many things and
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who finds peace, because peace takes him with him, and that is very
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difficult, because being able to be at peace, although he is already very
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lost in many moments, is absolutely empty of himself, because he does not
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recognize life in him, not telling him a kind of that there is nothing
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inside, that is, the war snatches him up to who he is,
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he does not get to lose, even his own identity of what is lost
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that he finds when he is so young in that front that he has to
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fight, in the end, because it is a very hard front that makes
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him and in the end it is clear that they have to escape in the
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rear, that he is all the time behind the back and he without reinventing
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at the end finds peace when he arrives in Moscow, when he becomes a
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journalist, when he arrives in Bucar, that is to say, when he,
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through love for a woman, he ends up finding himself because he has
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values, he has values for you have unfounded by his family, also by
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his authentic way of life. And that life form that he had that preserves
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it forever. And those values are going to mark him, because all his
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journey and they' re going to give him that peace in the end,
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when he really knows who michal aguirre is. I' m not saying anything
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else. Bucar is a Republican pilot' s daughter. You almost named her
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a moment ago, because she was the first love Ebellia Rosales Covadonga, the
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first love and the only one, the only one, the only love Mary.
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You also point out what we were talking about that she, her cabin
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is different, her transformation is unexpected. I would say above all at the
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beginning the transformation of Mary. Maria. Yes, yes, although his uncle
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already saw that he had, that he had to say material, that he
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was a very intelligent person, that he had a gift to be and to
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run away from many places. Yes, I don' t say peace,
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Maria, if you don' t want to say anything else. And to
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Fernando de Mura, that is good, Mary, Mary, is or Mary
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is a Say we are the protagonist, because it is the one that we
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say, because Mary is the one that has the greatest burden of chapters,
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not because we the story was going to run through Mary, but why,
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because Mary is the one that pursues, it is action, that is,
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it is the one that will make the novel run. So, Maria is
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the protagonist, who' s going to be doing things throughout the novel and
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she' s going to carry all the weight. Then, Mary, Mary,
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is released because well, the six- year- old girl when he
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and the brigade arrive to her farm and kill her parents. And Mitchell'
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s there because Mitchel doesn' t do anything to the poor thing. Mitchell
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is simply within the commit of ns seizures, that the Deputy Commissioner Tual seizure
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committee, and everything on the estate you have to refer to. Well,
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because that' s what we' re gonna get out of here. Then
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Michald is just trying to make it clear. But Mitchel mitchebea to Maria.
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Mitchell see the kid because there' s a baby in that house. There
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is not a baby who is very sick, Lorenzo, who is Lorenzo,
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and that Mary is protecting her brother. But that kid, that kid is
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on the night of that eclipse. That boy dies, but he dies of
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illness because he' s already very sick. But Mary does not want to
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recognize her brother' s death. And then, at a certain point the
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Commissioner tells him to aguirre, come aguirre, take care of the clear boy
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finds himself with a terrible panorama, that is, with a girl who is
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the age of her brother, of Mitchell' s brother, who dies in
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the bombing of Gernikan In addition, she dies in a very tragic way,
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crushed inside a shelter, of the shelter of Santa Maria, that is,
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this whole story I will tell in the novel. Not then, Mitchel encounters
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a terrifying pananaba and has to tear the dead child out of Mary' s
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arms. And Maria will never forget that, she will never forget who is
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michela querre. It is very hard that scene, that scene is terribly hard,
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because it is narrated not only in an emotional way, but also in
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a very real way. Not clear how the situation is, no yes,
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and that story Mary on the mark in such a way that good stays with
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him. Maria is sent to dwell in the village, given a taonero to
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take care of her, because the military are going to do on an seized
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estate which will serve as a fort with a six- year- old girl.
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Then they take her to a tabonero she lives with, with the tabonero
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until the end of the war, which her uncle wins, who is an
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army general. Of course, then, from there on, she already has
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the power to win the war, and she begins that transformation in her to
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make amends and to take revenge on all these people who must be healed of
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my guard over the estate that has killed her parents, that does not take
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care of her brother, because this story is a story that could well have
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been true. Of course, these stories add up to a lot of stories.
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Of course, this story is the story of many, even if in
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this story it is a fictional one, but it is a story absolutely that
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can happen and that, in fact, has happened this way or another.
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Then, Mary, from that moment on, becomes a woman, becomes a
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mature woman, thus matures and is a woman who dedicates her life to seeking
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dissidents and to seeking revolutionaries and to seeking people who seek freedom, because to
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Mary there is nothing more repugnant than freedom, that freedom that I take everything
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away from her. No. So, Mary starts in good. Maria works
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for the National Movement for the General Secretariat of Movements and becomes a Falangist.
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There is a cousin in history, who is the Commissioner of the Social Political
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Brigade. And there we make a leap to the next stage of the novel,
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which would demand the toughest Francoism until the fifty- sixth year, which
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is the Francoism that exerts repression through the political police, because the exercise of
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violence has it at war, the army, the legal exercise of violence and
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in times of peace it has it to the police. And then, this
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police force, because it is what is obviously dedicated to looking for communists,
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to looking for anarchists, to looking for people who are fighting against Frank and
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who are in the burbs. And so, Mary has a very important role
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also as a searcher and they even carry out raids on houses, flats of
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people who are trying to reorganize the parties in hiding. And the novel is
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about this, about underground and a lot. We' re not going to
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tell any more, we' re not going to be scolded. Yeah,
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dedicate that book to your mother, which I can' t read. Yeah,
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but it' s probably lived a lot of stories of this kind.
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I don' t know if this story, but yes, in that time,
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in that space. Yes, the truth is that my family is a
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family too mom, which I think you have to notice, that it is
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a family very marked by the civil war, because I think it is unpretentious.
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I think that all the people that have the family there is a record
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that you keep. No, of course, there' s a record that
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' s there. Not saying my dad was my father. He was an
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orphan of war. My father' s father and my grandfather Domingo lose his
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life in weeds, say God, not at last anymore. My mom has
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her stories, too. My husband has his stories. My husband' s
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family has also been important because we said that, just as my family was
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a left- wing family, my husband' s family is a right-
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wing family and, in fact, my husband and my husband' s family
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have people on the minilla, that is, ancestors. Yeah, I'
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ve been told a lot of things about what happened in La Mancha. And,
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well, I don' t know among all the things that you go
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all the sums of life, not when you penetrate, when you' re
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going to write a story and go down to the bottom, which is where
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the true stories come from. Deep down you know the warehouse down, the
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warehouse down. There he turns off the light and begins to pull out and
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write authentically. Yeah, what I always try with all my novels. And
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from there it came out under the light of the eclipse. Well, in
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the light of the eclipse, a pleasure, just as I like to do.
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Thank you very much.