Sandra Barneda: "You have to stop whitewashing the couple: none is perfect"

Gray tailored suit, black loafers, shoulder bag.

Sandra Barneda (Barcelona, ​​47 years old) unintentionally composes the perfect picture of a stressed urbanite while she dispatches a call walking in circles at the doors of her publishing house in Madrid.

She has arrived early and takes advantage of the wait by resolving work issues.

We met to talk about her book,

, published after

with which she was a finalist for the Planeta Prize

and

among other novels and essays.

But she, a journalist after all, as well as a writer and TV star, knows that her literary facet is the hanger from which we will hang more rags.

She does not care.

She enters everyone by right.

Waves, water, oceans.

And that fixation on the liquid element in the titles of his books?

It's unconscious, it comes out on its own.

Water is the symbol of emotions, which obsess me.

Neither your life, nor your work, nor your relationships have to be a sealed and closed box.

In this life we ​​are to continually reinvent ourselves, we are water, which always ends up finding the way out.

We have to be creative with our life.

The easy thing is that they tell us how we have to live, feel, work.

But there are those of us who don't fit in.

And I have always been different.

Have you paid a toll for that difference?

Yes, loneliness, sometimes.

A few years ago they began to say that I was such a perfectionist that they couldn't work with me.

I spent a year and a half without working, almost.

I don't think so.

But that made me think a lot.

What happens is that I like to question.

It has been difficult for me to understand authority because I am very free.

I have never been one of the herd.

From the school.

I am dyslexic and so I was undiagnosed.

Others' games bored me.

I rebelled and I rebelled.

But I am the most docile when given arguments.

In his book, a group of childhood friends meet again many years later and settle scores.

Do you have many?

I am not aware of having them, but it is true that when I write I expiate my demons.

I have been very lazy when it comes to maintaining personal ties and perhaps I have not cared enough for people, perhaps because of the lonely childhood I had.

I am in the middle of my life and I feel grateful.

For some time now, every Christmas, I write a letter and send it to all those who have contributed and accompanied me that year.

And I have already organized a reunion with my childhood friends, to whom I dedicate the book.

Was she alone as a child?

I am the youngest, I have spent many years with my brothers.

One of them was 10 years between life and death due to leukemia from which he was saved after much suffering.

Imagine what that is like in a family.

I took refuge in myself.

Its protagonist, a hyper-demanding successful woman, hires

Well, hyperdemanding is something that has haunted and punished me all my life.

She is castrating.

She, my protagonist, affected by the traumatic death of her brother, is left with the refuge of success.

How many people don't take shelter at work?

My work life has been much easier for me than my personal life, but there comes a time when you can't keep running away from yourself.

What was your click to stop doing it?

I consider myself a successful person, but I did not reach real enjoyment.

He told me that something was wrong.

I checked myself, I got into psychoanalysis, which came as a fable.

I understood how my mind works.

And it changed my life.

Still don't fit in any box?

I no longer care if I fit in, I no longer care.

I believe that one has to fit in with oneself, without complaints, without excuses.

Two are not in conflict if one does not want to.

And I don't want.

I am at peace with myself, it is a brutal change.

Are you happy now?

Yes, because I have learned to sustain myself in sadness.

Because I don't ask so much of happiness anymore.

At home she ran away from sadness, she covered herself.

I sometimes made her angry.

And no.

You have to admit that you are sad, go through that sadness, admit that you are a piece of shit.

Mourn.

The first few times it's horrible.

You think that crying is not going to end.

One day, you wake up and feel better.

You understand yourself, and you begin to live differently.

For weepers, the ones that stick to

They are really suffering.

And I suffer seeing them having a terrible time for love.

For me, love is the engine of life, my source of energy.

And I, on the island, am his only point of support.

The program has made me a better person.

I listen to them and look them in the eye when they are most vulnerable.

That goes for life in general.

We don't look at each other, we don't listen to each other.

And, here and now, listening to the other saves lives.

We know.

It commands respect at that festival of hormones.

What do you think your

I give credibility, authenticity.

I always say that I am the serious girl of entertainment.

My character is very close to me, and that, on TV, shows.

A boss once told me that I whiten the format, and the format doesn't tarnish me.

I think I am recognized for that.

Aren't you embarrassed?

No, that would mean that I judge the contestants.

I try to understand them.

To put myself in his age, his moment, the circumstances of his partner.

Aren't you freaked out by his

Yes, but they are his

.

If we accepted differences more, we would be better, because sometimes what we do is want to impose our way of seeing life.

We could extrapolate this to politics.

Why don't we look for meeting points instead of always being in conflict or contempt?

One of the things that shocks some of the show the most is seeing women being explicit and blissfully unfaithful and taking the sexual initiative.

Are you surprised that it surprises?

Nothing surprises me.

Women are like that too.

If you have friends, you know.

The woman must be reconstructed in fiction and in reality, because she is much more complex than the stereotype.

We return to the box.

We flow.

You can be one at one time in your life, and another, at another.

I have a friend who has been the Virgin Mary in her 15 years of marriage, and after her separation and a year crying on the corners, now she wants to fuck everything.

And she's the same great person she's always been.

In a life there are several and you have to dare to live them all, and live them well.

Have you ever blushed at a sexual image of infidelity that you show participants on the tablet?

A little, sometimes, but relationships have changed.

When it comes to couples, many still think analog, VHS, while others are in the digital age.

How is that eaten?

Well, not everyone repeats the

couple format for life and does it freely and without guilt.

The perfect couple does not exist.

We have to stop whitewashing the couple because it is, or could be, a hell that is not counted.

Then they separate and everyone says "how happy they seemed".

And shit, in all couples things happen.

And if they don't pass, that couple is dead.

It's what I told you before about emotions.

We do not know how to manage them.

Emotionally we are in panties.

And what do we do with jealousy?

What do you do?

Eat them and work them.

If I want to be free, I will have to respect the other.

Showing your vulnerability is the best antidote to jealousy.

If you ask me what my temptation is at this moment in my life, it is to show myself vulnerable, because that is brave.

As you say on your show, are there more pictures for me?

Haha.

There are always more images.

Images are experiences.

And, if there isn't, it's because you don't live.

THE BARNEDA SEAL

Sandra Barneda can see everything in her eyes.

The memes that circulate through the networks with the faces that she makes while she listens to the love sorrows of the contestants of

, the

that she presents, where several couples star and endure infidelities before the audience are famous.

That transparency, together with her poise and seriousness in the most delusional situations ―"my thing is half-smiling humor," she says― is the hallmark as host of entertainment programs of this insatiable curious and passionate writer who studied journalism because she was interested in "everything human".

She now she presents

, a novel in which a group of childhood friends meet again after decades.

Personally, after her recent breakup with her partner, Nagore Robles, also on television, she says she finds herself "happy and grateful" in the middle of her life. 

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