A Paloma Sánchez-Garnica (Madrid,1962) the streets of Zaragoza evoke something special, her childhood, her adolescence and that wind that blew, and still blows, when the winner of the Planeta Award 2024 walked through them. Perhaps many did not know it, but the writer lived in the Aragonese capital with her parents and her two brothers until she was 20. This Thursday she returned to the city with a Planeta under her arm and together with the finalist, Beatriz Serrano, to meet her readers. “Victoria” is the name of the novel that, as if in a premonition, ended up giving her her own. With the hustle and bustle in the agenda of those who have won the biggest literary prize (at least the biggest one), Sánchez-Garnica tells of a ravaged Berlin, a love story and the violation of human rights in a prize-winning novel.
QUESTIONVictory” at the end gave you the victory and took the Planet. Did you expect it?
ANSWER.– I am very happy. It is like a recognition of a lot of work, a lot of effort, years of tenacity, of pursuing a dream, of working for a project and in the end achieving a goal. That can be a long road, I feel that I have achieved recognition for a lot of effort because it has cost me a lot to get here. It’s not that the Planeta has been a goal, but it’s true that in writing you go up steps and you get more and more readers. In “Últimos días en Berlín” I submitted to the Planeta because I know that the promotion is brutal and then you get there and the spectrum of readers widens in an impressive way.
I came very close to winning it and then I said: I’m going to try again. A few years ago I didn’t even think about it, it didn’t even cross my mind, but you follow the path and you keep dreaming. In the end, the important thing is to write.
P.- The Planeta is always a reason for criticism… Do you think that the reader prejudges more when facing the novel?
R.- I think each writer is different. The fact that the Planeta is a worldwide news, especially in the Spanish-speaking world, in Spain and in Latin America, also raises haters of all kinds, right? People who criticize, people who don’t, who say they don’t read Planetas because they don’t, because they are very bad, well, maybe they miss great stories. There is also that prejudice, women who write that, well, many times there are men who say they don’t read novels written by women because they don’t want to and because they don’t like it. I think you have to get into novels because they call you, they attract you, because you have heard that they are good or simply because of that feeling of wanting to read and discover a story that you might find interesting. It doesn’t matter if it has the Planeta seal or not. What is true is that Planeta has a very big promotion and then the criticisms are very evident.
“I think you have to get into novels because they call you or because of that feeling of wanting to read”.
P.- He says that this is not a historical novelbut it does include events such as the construction of the Berlin Wall.
R.- Of course, it is not a historical novel, because I do not treat historical facts or a historical character as a fundamental element of history, as the bastion around which I fictionalize, but on the contrary. I put my characters to live and manage their feelings in a historical moment. From what moment is a historical novel? In the novels we deal with the universal feelings of human beings, how they manage their feelings, their capacity to love, the hatred, the envy they suffer, the betrayals, the capacity to decide, the capacity to act in a certain historical space, with certain laws… The prejudices of 40 years ago have nothing to do with those of now and how can it be if we were the same human beings. What I try to show is that everything revolves around the moment in which you live.
And that’s what I try to understand, how people like me or anyone around me lived in the society in which I move, how they lived in that particular time so that the reader, like me, when I’m writing it can go hand in hand with those characters in their daily lives. How they face their decisions, how they assimilate the things that happen. Let’s say it’s a genre novel, a love novel, a spy novel, a thriller.In the end, all novels teach you something.
P.- He returns to that scenario that he already addressed in “Last Days in Berlin”.Was it clear to you that “Victory” was coming next?
R.- Yes, when I finished “Last Days in Berlin” I was already curious about what it was like to live in those 15 years before the wall. That August 13, 1961, when the border was closed and the physical wall began to be built. I wanted to delve into how they moved in that Berlin after the war without a wall. Sectored, divided, occupied, but without a wall, that is, they could. There were no restrictions to go from one side to the other. After leaving “Last Days in Berlin” I was very focused on the consequences of Nazism. Not only the horror of the Holocaust but also the violation of the fundamental rights of Jews, Slavs and anyone who stood in front of the Nazis. I realized that on the other side of the Atlantic, in a democratic country, in a country that defines itself as the fairest, richest and most powerful in the world, there was a flagrant violation of fundamental rights.
P.- “Victoria” is also a love novel….
R.- There is always love, there is always love. In the end, we human beings are moved by love, by family ties, by bad decisions, by a misunderstanding that apparently seems forgotten but eventually causes pain. But yes, there is a lot of love. That of Victoria who falls in love with an American, Robert Norton. It is a love that saves them both but also exposes them to all the threats that weigh each of them down. Turning the other into the most vulnerable party. This vicarious violence, right? I mean, I don’t hurt you but I hurt the one you love the most. And that’s what happens to each of them. I think it’s a very tender and very endearing love story.
P.- He took the leap into literature at the age of 43 and almost 20 years later he already has a handful of novels and a Planeta… He hasn’t wasted any time.
R.- The truth is that I never thought of writing until I was 43 years old, but it is true that I have been interested since I was 20. The world of books has always fascinated me, that is, bookstores, libraries, accumulating books, making my library. I have a library with many books. Because for me it is like a patrimony of mine, the read and unread ones, because the unread ones are absolutely grateful, they don’t ask for anything, they just hang on and wait there without asking for anything.
I always had a restlessness, I knew I had come to the world to do something. And in that search I made two careers, got married, had children and suddenly I was placed in 43 and I told my friends that I was going to write a novel. But without any ambition besides writing, they told me it was very good, I submitted it. I sent it to a literary agent, they published it and I was suddenly fascinated by the whole publishing world. At that moment I was aware that it was where I wanted to be. Surely if I had had that certainty at the age of 20 and had started writing, it would have been a failure because I was very impatient, very vehement. I think I had to train myself culturally and professionally to form certain and credible characters and that, in my case, is only given by experience.
P.- You sign today in Zaragoza, maybe many people don’t know it but it’s your land…
R.- Of course. I arrived here when I was four years old with my parents and my siblings, my father became a professor and was the dean of the Veterinary School until 1981 when he died and my parents are buried here, my two brothers, my sisters-in-law and my nephews and nieces live here. Here I spent my childhood and adolescence until I was 20 when I got married. I always come back because for me the streets of Zaragoza have something special, even the wind.