Fran Gayo, writer: "I don't believe the sweetened nostalgia exercises"

Fran Gayo (Gijón, 52 years old) has been reconverting according to life and his artistic interests suggested turns.

And many times, contrary to the prevailing current.

When the outbreak of Xixón Sound, the golden age of Asturian pop and rock, he formed the duo Mus, who opted for intimate melodies and lyrics in bable, unlike his generation mates, who did so predominantly in English.

From 1997 to 2009 he was responsible for programming at the FicXixón International Film Festival.

And out of love she moved to Buenos Aires, when the Argentines emigrated to Spain.

There she has worked in the team of the prestigious BAFICI (Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival), has organized various shows and published monographic film studies, and from there she monitors current affairs in Spain.

With everything,

(Trojan Horse), a book that wanted to be a horror story and has ended up fused with a description of three generations of Asturians, a portrait of racism in his native region and life through an alter wretched ego of the author.

“When I wanted to realize it, my grandmother, her ghost, was already in the book.

And at that moment, she started to transform into something else."

In Madrid, one cold day, over a coffee with milk, he starts his reflections.

More information

"Asturian miners are the last bastion of a land of losers"

Question.

In

, much is said about historical memory.

Answer

.

I wouldn't say so much memory as memories.

If I say memory, it is a very intimate and malleable one.

I finished writing it and I don't even know what things were left in and what were out.

In the end the book is a diffuse image of the past.

And I like to think that memory has the same root as dreams.

It is not possible to raise rigorous testimony of the facts, especially of the family past.

Even my brother has a very different view of our shared childhood.

Q.

But the part about racism does reflect what happened with part of the Asturian peasantry.

R.

Because part of the reality, very harsh, of the vaqueiros de alzada, who earned their living with cattle, with which they went up to the interior mountains in summer and in winter they went down to the brañas near the coast.

That is documented, and there are even texts by Jovellanos that described the racism suffered by that community in Western Asturias.

The churches were divided with a beam, and the vaqueiros could only be of that mark backwards.

In the bars they were not allowed to drink from crystal glasses and only allowed from cow horns.

I have always been obsessed with imagining the life of my family before I appeared.

And that includes the odyssey of those people who end up adapting to the cities of the sixties and seventies... without diluting classism.

I think that's where my class identity was born.

Not only because of the conviction that you suck at home, but because of what you see of brutal economic differences between, for example, a lawyer and a bricklayer.

In short, the friction between classes creates identity.

Now, in Argentina I see him again: from the circle that surrounds me, none of his father was a worker.

That sets you apart, and you can never forget it.

My novel is based on the harsh reality of the vaqueiros de alzada, who earned their living with cattle, with which they went up to the interior mountains in summer and went down to the brañas near the coast in winter.”

Q.

Is the novel a written testimony of that?

R.

Sure, and it was already on Mus's records, and in my poems.

She is part of me, she is in my veins, and I feel her even more since my parents are gone.

That class consciousness follows me even if I end up dedicating myself to a film programmer.

What cannot happen is that I transmit the sorrow to my son.

Because there is a screwed up part of that self-awareness, and it was managing it with my father and mother.

I made an intellectualization of the fact that they did not.

They both knew where they were born and everything they had to work for.

But they went no further.

I cried a lot watching

the film by Laurent Cantet, which recounted that generation gap and that different perspective between parents and children.

Q.

Was it clear that your character was going to be an Asturian in Argentina?

R.

I started writing the story in the fall of 2020, as a horror story, as a diversion.

Suddenly, my grandmother entered the first line, I advanced in writing and my life began to turn to letters.

From confinement to her protagonist, a character on the run.

To the point that not only does she move 7,000 miles away and disown her past, but she also changes her name.

She runs away and constantly rethinks herself.

Q.

Your book is another example of how current terror in cinema, literature and television harbors social and political reflections.

R.

In my case, I felt the need to collect legends and anecdotes that had been told to me in the kitchen of my house after eating, since childhood.

I have reconstructed many from fiction because I am missing a lot of data.

My grandmother would tell me what am I doing... she wanted to recover certain popular heritage and also the figure of the necromancer, that person who was linked to the afterlife, and who until recently was very normalized.

How do you live from day to day if you don't stop seeing future misfortunes?

And I put that in a structure, my neighborhood life.

With my moves to the center of the cities, with my move to Buenos Aires, I have become depersonalized.

When I return to Xijón, and I approach my childhood streets, there is nothing left.

That is why I had to write, and express that it was important and that it was not pretty.

When I return to Xijón, and I approach my childhood streets, there is nothing left.

That is why I had to write, and capture that that was important and that it was not pretty”

Q.

Did you battle a lot against memories?

R.

I had to let them go, and others I couldn't capture because they were... brutal.

In the end, it's a fiction... and I had a delivery date [laughs].

Q.

In Asturias there is a struggle to remember the recent past that does not occur in other parts of Spain.

R.

Well, I would say that in Galicia too.

In other communities, previous work may have been done in institutions.

Well or not.

In Asturias we have pushed individuals.

Q.

Obligatory question: does Mariana Enríquez influence you as a horror author with political significance?

R.

It seems to me that

is a masterpiece that is difficult to beat.

I start from the family cosmos, I don't get that far.

Q.

You have gone through several radical life turns.

How are you doing?

R.

I don't know what to answer to that.

The music came first.

Film programmer is a trade.

And I could have stayed working on the Hombre project, where I taught.

From these changes comes, for example, that I keep few photos.

I have now recovered some for my son.

Nothing has been traumatic for me.

The stages are over.

Moving to Buenos Aires, which has a very special powerful energy, was the best decision.

He made me a father and made me write about things that in Spain I would not have dared.

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