Sabina Urraca (San Sebastián, 37 years old) has just landed in Iowa with a scholarship to do the same master's degree in creative writing that took Louise Gluck, Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever and Philip Roth to the Olympus of literature; although, to relativize this milestone in her career, she explains: "It's the one Lena Dunham went to do in
Girls."
It is not that she does not know who the first four authors cited are, but that this very modern author who achieved public notoriety thanks to some incendiary articles of
gonzo
journalism
,
in which she lived a natural birth or drank breast milk for 21 days, knows the pulse of her time and recognizes the value of the saints of millennial heroines. Her first novel,
The Wonder Girls
,
it was a critical success.
After working last year as "occasional editor" of the book
Panza de Burro
,
by Andrea Abreu, a few months ago she published a very original review of 11-M as part of the collection of
National Episodes
proposed by the Lengua de Trapo publishing house to narrate events of the last four decades in the manner of Benito Pérez Galdós.
Question.
Why do you say that this event was your first political disappointment?
Answer.
Preparing the book, I began to watch archival videos about 11-M and suddenly I found myself in the images with my 19-year-old self, demonstrating in front of Genoa.
It made a great impression on me to see myself, but above all to see me so disenchanted, as with a broken heart.
Not that I had high-ranking politicians at all, because I was quite punk, but somehow I maintained an idealism, an adolescent candor, which at that moment was broken.
More information
'The generation': history of the last 'boom' of Spanish literature
The National Episodes of democracy
Q.
Are you no longer indignant like this?
R.
I am outraged the same, but there is no longer the candor of that time.
I don't expect too much from the political class.
I would like to recover parts of that innocence, to believe in something a lot.
You have to scratch energetically around the corners to be happy.
At times it is achieved.
But disappointment with many things persists.
Q.
How which?
R.
I would tell you thousands, but right now the subject of Cuba comes to mind. I have many Cuban friends. I traveled to the island seven years ago at a time in my life when I literally had nowhere to fall dead and they welcomed me with great affection. When I first saw what was there, the romanticized image of the revolution completely disappeared. I think it is very important to say that Cuba is a dictatorship because there has been an exaggerated violation of human rights for many years and, nevertheless, some people I know no longer wear Che's shirt because it is no longer fashionable, but if it were not so, they would carry it. I am horrified by how comfortable it is to believe in a story.
Q. You
practiced
very impressive
gonzo
journalism for a while
that made you gain a lot of notoriety.
What is the text you are most proud of?
A.
The first article I published in
Vice
magazine
,
precisely from when I was in Cuba, was about the pornographic graffiti on the walls of some abandoned houses.
Porn is prohibited in Cuba, and there are buildings full of drawings of people fucking that are like a kind of giant comics, sexual fantasies embodied on the walls.
It is fascinating.
As a result of that article, I was offered to write my first book.
Q.
To write it, he went to the Alpujarra for a year.
Did you also recalibrate the romanticism of rural life?
R.
I never romanticized the subject of the field, mainly because I was not in the field retired in a Thoreau plan, but because at that time my situation of precariousness was so great that I went to a place where I could pay 100 euros of rent.
Obviously the place was beautiful and I will carry it in my heart always.
I still write letters to the neighbors, from time to time I visit, but I have not lived there again.
Q.
Is it angry when you are told that you are the voice of your generation?
R.
They are two very easy words to say that do not mean anything.
Q.
But you have been in many ways a great representative of millennial anguish.
Have those anxieties been resolved now or are they still there, only that your generation has already been displaced by another?
R.
The anguish was due to the precarious.
In my case, the precarious situation has improved because I have been getting lucky.
But I have had a perpetual existential crisis since I was very little and I don't know if that is very millennial or not very millennial.
For example, the horror that the world causes me makes me not understand that people want to reproduce.
I understand it as a perfectly respectable fad, but I don't see the point.
P.
The editorial phenomenon of the season,
Feria,
by Ana Iris Simón, defends the birth rate.
Why do you think they say he is a neo-fascist?
R.
I am going to give my opinion without having read it, which I think is very daring, but I have the feeling that some have used it and others to throw it in the face.
I do not understand the romanticization and exaltation of motherhood as the ultimate goal, but I suppose that no one is free: I also romanticize absurd causes.
Q.
Now that you are a more established author, do you feel more conservative when writing?
A.
On the contrary.
When I wrote on social networks, I was very attached to the idea of being happy and liked, I had a character and I had to keep it.
I was getting a lot of applause and I was hooked on it.
Now I don't care so much about liking it.
My latest book has received devastating moral criticism.
That has given me a boost of freedom.
Q.
Which ones have impacted you the most?
R.
Those who insult me for what they say is unnecessary sexual violence or lack of respect for the victims of 11-M.
I think the fact that many readers are looking for a book to confirm the ideas they already have is becoming too exacerbated in current literature.
Many people just want to read about morally correct characters who think what they already think.
The biggest criticism of many readers of some books is: "I have not felt anything identified."
Literature does not exist for that.
P.
But you had already starred in great controversies, like that time you went viral for a text in which you narrated a trip on BlaBlaCar with Álvaro de Marichalar.
Would you rewrite that?
R.
It hurt me that at that time it was seen as news from the heart: "Marichalar travels in Blablacar", when in reality it was a self-criticism of those of us who sometimes lowered our heads when there were situations of abuse of power.
I would rewrite it so that it was clearer that the main point was that I was not able to say something to that man who did not respect the other passengers.
And that I should have.
Q.
And now would you dare?
R.
In my life I remember a lot the Marichalar moment and the fury I felt, which I could not handle well.
With age you learn to manage your anger in your favor, to respond in situations of abuse towards yourself or towards others.
Q.
Your partner is going with you to the United States.
There are many, many authors who have been able to write thanks to the care of their wives. Have the roles been turned around?
R.
In my case, a little yes.
In fact, when we applied for the visa we realized that we would have been much less afraid in the interviews to explain “the heteronormative”: that it was he who had received the scholarship and I was his consort.
Even many people ask him with surprise: "But what are you going to do there?"
And he says: "I'm going to work on my personal projects and take care of my partner."
Q.
One of your favorite authors is Lydia Davis, who was married for a season to Paul Auster.
How would you like to be married to a writer as brilliant as you?
Q.
Well, Paul Auster seems fine to me, but Lydia is a million times better [laughs].