Interview with Dolores Redondo, winner of the 2016 Planeta Award

After selling more than 700 thousand copies of his Baztán trilogy, Dolores Redondo (San Sebastián, 1969) substitutes matriarchies for patriarchies, Navarra for Galicia and a more familiar magic for another full of taboos from Galician lands. The 2016 Planeta Prize winning novel is called All this I will give you and it is a play about "impunity and greed", in the words of Redondo herself.

Dolores Redondo: "In Galicia there are sanctuaries where people go to rid themselves of the devil"

Dolores Redondo walks through the Press Room of the Fairmont Juan Carlos I hotel in Barcelona happily tired, with a glass of Coca Cola with which she tries to alleviate the lack of sleep and the flashes of the bubble in which she has been plunged for fourteen hours.

According to his words at the press conference, All this I will give you, the work camouflaged under the pseudonym Sol de Tebas and winner of the 2016 Planeta Prize, is a crime novel about impunity and greed set in the mysterious lands of the Galician Ribeira Sacra . A story that begins with the identification in Lugo of Álvaro's corpse by her husband, Manuel, who begins to discover little by little the double life of his partner thanks to the help of a priest and a retired civil guard.

Literature News: How do you feel?

Dolores Redondo: (laughs) I don't know, weird, I'm happy. I still have the feeling of not having landed that I need a moment of privacy and solitude to analyze everything that has happened to me.

AL: And rest. . .

DR: Yes, but more than resting to say "this has happened." Because it's still happening.

AL: Perhaps when time passes and you remember this day you will not do it clearly.

DR: (Laughs) Totally!

AL: Tell me about All this I'll give you: how is it different from everything you've written before?

DR: In the first place, I am no longer the person who wrote the other novels. All of them were conceived from a different perspective, that of someone who was not professionally dedicated to writing, at least with The invisible guardian. Obviously these works have had to leave a mark that the reader notices. Then there is also a conscious intention to do different things. The first approach, the most obvious, resides in the fact that in the Baztán trilogy women and a matriarchal society prevailed, however this time I have gone to the other extreme, to the other side of the country, to a different landscape with totally different customs and way of life; a total patriarchy heavily influenced by Catholicism.

AL: In fact, the protagonists of this novel are men.

DR: Yes, they are three different men totally confronted, united by a common search for the truth. A small friendship that is emerging little by little until it already forces them to a commitment that encourages them to continue together towards the search for the truth.

AL: You commented that the setting, in this case the Galician Ribeira Sacra, had a special importance, being one more character. What has been the most inspiring place for you in that geography?

DR: I really like a place called Belesar, a river port on the Sil river. I love to travel the river by boat contemplating all those vineyards reaching the shore. It is spectacular, inspiring. Know what is there, that under the water there are seven submerged villages and people had to move higher.

AL: As in the Baztán trilogy, there is still magic, but in this case it is different.

DR: Yes. As with Baztán, in Navarra, I found it interesting to talk about more magical aspects because I considered that they were being lost and had only been told from an anthropological point of view. The everyday use of these legends had been lost.

However, in Galicia the effect is the opposite, because Galicia is always closely linked to the meigas, to the healers, to all those topics that I have fled and that I have decided not to include. The Ribeira Sacra has the highest concentration of churches, convents and Romanesque art in all of Europe. Catholicism and the way in which people live in the area entails a different relationship between the Catholic Church and the people and there are certain practices that do not occur elsewhere in the country and that are still preserved. Unlike the magic of Baztán, this one is very shocking and striking. These are beliefs that are part of everyday faith and belief. In several places in Galicia there are several sanctuaries and one of the priests of the novel is in one of them. People come to him to get rid of the devil. I have been there, that exists and is done daily. People come when they suspect that they have suffered a spiritual attack and there is a priest who, without any fault, agrees to heal them. I don't know what the priest of my church would say if I am going to ask him to remove the devil from me (laughs). But there it exists, it is common, and it is part of everyday life. It cannot be called magic, it would be disrespectful, it is a very striking way of living the faith that leaves very dark margins so that things can happen that may not have a logical explanation.

AL: It is a taboo.

DR: Exact!

AL: And you don't know what to explain.

DR: Exactly, what do you explain there? You have to respectfully accept that there are people who go and that these things happen with total normality.

AL: What advice would you give to anyone who would like to apply for the Planeta Award?

DR: I would advise you not to do like me the first time and to wait until you have a better novel. You always have to go with a better novel. Especially if the first time you write, believe me, you can write something better. Only by rewriting it would you see the difference because you have already learned, you have written a novel. Think that in the publishing world, despite the fact that later we find very repetitive things, if what you really want is great success you have to look for the new, they are always looking for the different. If you settle for being a copycat or repeating cliches, you're not going to get very far and there is usually only one chance to make a first impression. If when you have the novel you admit that you can do better, don't present it yet.

AL: What are you going to do with the prize?

DR: Half for Montoro, of course (laughs). And then, like many people in this country, I have two elderly parents living on a limited pension and two unemployed brothers. . . I'm the older sister so helping out is common for me (laughs).

All this I will give, by Dolores Redondo has been the winning work of the Planeta Prize 2016 and we hope to read it in Actualidad Literatura during the next few weeks.

Have you read Redondo's work?