Seven years ago Laura Restrepo (Bogotá, 72 years old) decided to settle down and settled in an old farmhouse near Borredà, in the Barcelona Pre-Pyrenees.
There she lives with her son, Pedro, 42, and two dogs: Azul and Dante.
They restored the house room by room and renamed
it Lejanías
.
The writer, who has just published the novel
Song of old lovers
(Alfaguara), is about to leave for two months in Mexico and Colombia.
Enthusiastic about Gustavo Petro, who this Sunday took possession of the presidency of his country, she frequently stops the interview to ask what her son, the photographer or the editor think.
Ask.
You have spent your life out of town: Mexico, the United States, Italy, Spain several times... Is this your fixed place?
Response.
When Pedro was nine years old he put a sign in his room that said: “I don't want to go anywhere”.
He had to live in the jungle, pack suitcases from one day to the next, run away... They were busy times, but they have borne fruit.
P.
With Petro as president?
R.
_
He and I are part of the M-19.
Until the end, during the campaign, I feared that he would be assassinated.
As they had done before with all the leftist candidates with a chance of winning.
A former guerrilla president?
Miraculous.
P.
You participated in the peace processes of the eighties.
R.
Of correveidile.
She was 33 years old.
He went from the guerrilla camps to the presidential palace.
Belisario Betancourt opted for peace with great enthusiasm, but the ruling class and the military turned against him.
And they began to kill those who handed over their weapons.
I told him it was a bloodbath and he replied: “I can't do anything, I don't have anyone”.
"He has the people," I replied.
And he told me a phrase that I do not forget: "He who has the people has no one."
Q.
Is it different now?
R.
Petro has Francia Márquez, a social leader.
He will have to negotiate with the powerful in Colombia, who are usually treacherous, but she guarantees him popular support.
With the force of the street it is possible that they hold on.
If they manage to stop the violence, it will be a lot.
There is talk of nine million victims.
Pablo Escobar sent a hitman to kill me for writing an article
Q.
Weren't you scared?
R.
(
His son intervenes, laughing
) What's up!
She took the risk and I passed the fear.
Q.
But he had to go into exile.
A.
To Mexico.
And there I continued working to reopen the peace process.
Now Colombia has lost its fear.
Detail of the notes of the writer. Massimiliano Minocri
Q.
How?
R.
Pablo Escobar was a whole school.
Nobody's life was guaranteed with him: they blew up shopping malls, knocked down planes... No television series ever understood him because it had to be understood based on his great intelligence.
He said he liked his money, but he didn't.
One of his most tremendous phrases was: "I'm going to make this country cry."
And he did.
He had an army dedicated to making us suffer.
That's what we lived on.
And we learned to live.
P.
He also threatened you.
A.
Because I wrote the first article in
Semana
magazine that talked about hit men who killed on motorcycles.
Nobody knew who they were.
I went to the communes, I spoke with them, with their girlfriends, with their mothers.
They were 12-year-old boys trained by Escobar.
It was a social, humanist article.
It was a phenomenon in Colombia.
Q.
How did you receive it?
R.
Given the success, the magazine sent a reporter who spoke with the police, who pointed out people.
And Pablo sent me a human rights guy to tell me that he hadn't liked the article: "He gave the order to kill you."
I replied that the second was not mine, that if they were going to kill me they would do it for the one I signed.
The mediator left with the message and I took the child to my mother's house because she thinks that nothing can happen to her mother's house.
He came back in a week and told me: "Pablo understood, but he sends you to say that the motorcycle has already left and it doesn't have a radio telephone."
We broke with a colonial situation with respect to Spain.
Now we need to break with neocolonialism
Q.
And what did you do?
R.
We went to Miami for three months, until they stopped the hit man.
But here I am.
The number of journalists they killed is uncountable.
Despite everything, Colombia is not only that.
P.
Do you feel that it is the topic that survives in Spain?
R.
People treat us with great affection, but we don't stop being sudacas.
The fact of recognizing ourselves as republics that gained their independence is not easy for the Spanish.
It has been seen when the King did not rise to the passing of Bolívar's sword in Petro's possession.
I see a lot of paternalism, but we are not just backwardness and violence: we are worthy peoples who managed to break a colonial situation.
We need to break with neocolonialism.
Laura Restrepo, inside her country house, this Tuesday. Massimiliano Minocri
P.
Dignity is key in your latest novel, an extreme trip to Yemen and Ethiopia.
A.
It is based on a trip I took with Doctors Without Borders.
It was visiting the end of the world.
It is a humanitarian drama, and yet the women told me: "I have nothing, but my lineage is that of the Queen of Sheba."
P.
Did you go through the same feelings as your narrator: pity, compassion, enchantment, annoyance?
R.
We get tired of bad news.
We are seeing it with the war in Ukraine.
Q.
Does living in the mountains give you strength?
R.
This is also an end of the world.
I got used to living in the wind, but stability is built here.
I travel a lot and the one who maintains this is Pedro.
The difference is that now I always come back.
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