Suso de Toro: Spain is Madrid, and Madrid is Spain

  • Interview with the Galician novelist and columnist who is to receive the Sant Jordi Cross for his outspoken defense of Catalonia

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12.04.2014 - 00:58

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Suso de Toro (1956, Santiago de Compostela) is a Galician novelist who has been an outspoken defender of Catalonia’s right to decide. Because of his writing on Catalonia, he has been chosen to receive the Catalan Government’s highest honor, the Cross of Sant Jordi. We spoke with him by phone last week from the school where he teaches in Santiago de Compostela.

I read that you have stopped writing.

Yes. I was a freelance author, and but I have abandoned that profession. It’s the end of a progression. Ever since I was a boy I wanted to be a writer, I started when I was in my late twenties, now I’m fifty-eight, so I’ve been writing for thirty years, really it’s more, I think I was first published in 1982 or so. And I’ve written something like thirty-one books. There’s a whole career behind me, and what I experienced was the limited possibilities of being an author for someone who was born in Galicia, in his city of Santiago, and who wanted to write in the Galician language in this Galicia and in this Spain. It’s very limited. A writer in Galician doesn’t have a country behind him, and certainly doesn’t have an administration behind him. There’s never been an administration, practically never, which has supported Galician literature.

That’s on the one hand. It’s a very weak foundation. And on the other hand, there are the obstacles for being a writer within the Spanish State and being accepted and to be able to circulate your work in the Galician language. My experience is that there is a huge resistance from Madrid to allowing works that are not in the Spanish language to circulate throughout the Spanish State. Sometimes it’s very explicit.

I remember once they had awarded one of my novels, written in Galician, with a national prize, and I remember that in one of the leading Madrid newspapers, one of the critics wrote, “This guy, nobody has read his novel, it’s not that he’s a bad writer, he’s ok, it’s just that we have our own writers,” and then he listed various authors who write in Spanish. That is, I’ve never been “one of them”. Someone who writes in Galician, or Basque, or Catalan will never be “one of them”. You have to be part of the power center in this field in Madrid, and they are in Madrid, you know pro-Spanish.

That’s the crux of the question, then?

Yes, that’s it. Although of course there have also been enormous changes in this profession. The audience is shrinking, there are fewer people who read literature. Today what people read is another kind of literature, bestsellers, the audience has disappeared for literature, it’s a complex process. And there’s more. Readers of books have disappeared and been substituted by readers of screens, by readers on the internet. That’s a reality in our daily lives.

That’s strange, that the Spanish insist that you’re Spanish and then they don’t accept you as “one of theirs”.

Yes, I’ve been trying to explain it for decades. We writers who are citizens of the Spanish State, but who write in other languages besides Spanish, are stowaways on this boat. Or at the best, we are traveling in steerage. That’s our place. There is no other place for us. We are an anomaly. A tolerated anomaly. When we’re lucky, they assign us a quota. That’s the truth. Today, for example, in Spain, outside of Catalonia, no one knows any Catalan writers. No one. Absolutely no one.

This is part of the product of the decades since Franco died and it’s a reflection, a part of the reflection of the failure of this Spain, of the Spain that told itself that it was open to the possibility of reconstructing a democratic Spain. I always say that I heard people singing in Catalan in the Franco era, on Spanish TV, on Channel 2, even on Channel 1, back when there were just two channels, and today it is inconceivable that you might hear a song in Catalan on a Spanish TV channel, absolutely inconceivable. And it’s been like that for a while.

I don’t get it. I know lots of Spanish people, they aren’t monsters. But how can it be that there are so few, like you, who write about Cataluña?

It’s a power struggle, and there are very strong special interests. Personal, professional, economic, political interests. There are many interests for a nationalist political agenda, a pro-Spanish one. Just as there are, logically, nationalist agenda in Cataluña, or the Basque Country or Galicia. Whoever means to guarantee peaceful coexistence must look for and negotiate and come to agreements about these interests. These are realities that exist. But if what you’re trying to do is impose your interests, your ideology, and your plans on the rest of the people, that leads to a collective failure, which is what has happened. The Spanish political process begun after Franco’s death, after 77, that political process has failed. That’s what happened. When we talk about literature or language or other plans, or economics, or business, institutions, capital, we’re talking about the failure of all that. What has been constructed cannot be accepted by the Catalans.

What has happened to the left, who are the ones who should have defended plurinationalism?
I belong to the left, culturally to the anti-Francoist Left, in Galicia, of course. The anti-Francoist left, which was basically communist, since the Socialist party didn’t exist yet, the anti-Francoist left maintained a memory of Republicanism, and Republicanism had already recognized the existence of national projects within Spain. It had recognized the Statute of the Basques, of the Catalans, of the Galicians. That formed part of anti-Francoism. But, you have to keep in mind, from the start, that the anti-Francoist left was substituted by the Socialists, by PSOE, in 77 or 78, the left shifted to the PSOE. The PSOE was a reinvented party. And then, what happens is that the State, as it was at that point didn’t really change that much after Franco’s death, it was still the State, it continued to have the ideology, the interests, among other things, to conserve everything, the territory, to subject the territory from Madrid, control it from Madrid. The idea was still that it was Madrid and the provinces. And that is reflected in projects like the great Terminal 4 at Madrid’s airport, which was a huge waste, it cost a huge amount of money and it doesn’t work, like the radial network of train tracks, a wholly centralized network which converges in Madrid, and the network of highways that surrounds Madrid, and also the fact that when Zapatero’s government tried to transfer a small state agency from Madrid to Barcelona, there was a huge campaign against the process in the Madrid press, and also that when a Barcelona company tried to buy out a company in Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre and all of the power and press made very clear that they would prefer to be bought by a German company rather than a Catalan one. It’s always the same. Spain is Madrid and Madrid is Spain. At this point in the story, thirty-something years after Franco’s death, today, Spain is more centered on, controlled from, and identified with Madrid than it was forty-years ago.

But at the same time, they don’t want to let Cataluña go.

No, because there are very strong interests. All kinds of interests, even professional interests. You have to keep in mind that the Madrid press, during the democratic period, while we’re living in peace, the instruments of power are the media. All of those who write for the media, for the principal Spanish media, which is in Madrid, have a personal interest in keeping being published. I’m talking about the intellectuals, for example. Who are the Spanish intellectuals? Those who publish in leading Madrid papers. Those are the Spanish intellectuals. Not intellectuals who write in leading Bilbao papers, or Barcelona papers. So you can observe these elites, these circles, who in addition can identify with this centralized vision of Spain, and this Spain with a single language, and all that, logically, it all goes together. In fact in the end, there has been a process both in the Basque Country as well as in Cataluña, with significant examples, of intellectuals—perhaps university professors or writers or journalists—who end up emigrating from the Basque Country or Cataluña to Madrid.

Because that’s where the power is.

That’s where the power is. The important power is all there. The protection of the institutions of the State, of the businesses identified with the State, the institutions identified with the State, all of that is in Madrid. And we all know it.

On the one hand, they are defending their interests, and that’s where the pro-Spanish policies come from, pro-Spanish centralization responds to a desire to protect established interests. They want to conserve their privileges. But there is also enormous ignorance, for example, in the case of Catalonia. I once wrote that someone should tally up how many people from Barcelona use the high speed train or the quick flight to Madrid and how many people from Madrid go to Catalonia. Because of the way things work, whoever works in Catalonia, or in my case, Galicia, is probably obligated to travel to Madrid at one time or another. In contrast, most people in Madrid don’t have a need to go to Catalonia. What I mean to say is that there is total ignorance about Catalonia and even a refusal to get to know it and to recognize it. The ideology keeps them from learning about it and they live in ignorance. Someone can live their whole life in Madrid or in Ciudad Real or in Lugo and never once hear a word in Catalan. Not a single word ever. The interchange is one of unequals. It’s always unequal in the same direction. I think that since they’re always saying that bilingualism is so great, it should be required for everyone. In the same way that they require us, the Constitution requires by law that all citizens learn Spanish, it should also be, for equality’s sake, that all citizens of the Spanish State should have to learn another language from the State that isn’t Spanish. That is either Galician, or Basque, or Catalan.

I think that would be perfect. A way of making them put their money where their mouth is.

Of course. If we’re talking about fairness, we’ve have to do something like that. But that would generate an enormous campaign in the Madrid media.

Is there a solution to this lack of understanding?

No, in my opinion, there isn’t. There’s no solution. There’s no solution in the sense of constructing a common project, among the people within the Spanish State. I don’t think it’s at all possible. Because I see that that pro-Spanish ideology is widespread. I see in the Madrid press, the columns written by intellectuals, people in the intellectual sphere, and I realize that with respect to the idea of Spain people who self-identify as on the right and those who say they’re on the left have very similar ideas about it. And in fact, this is what has allowed a project, if you can call it that, like that of Rosa Díez [UPyD] appeal to both sides. A project of harmful pro-Spanish nationalism, but there are leftists, who consider themselves leftists, who say it’s legitimate and there are people on the right who consider it legitimate. I’m seeing how the Madrid papers all participate to different degrees, but you can see now in the case of Catalonia, that everone’s on Madrid’s side.

But isn’t there curiosity, interest?
No, there isn’t. There has never been any. And there won’t be any. It’s possible that future events obligate them to negotiate. But that will only happen because Catalonia has forced Spain to negotiate. So it may be that in the future—they’re talking now about federalism, after being very quiet all these years, now they’re talking about reforming the constitution. They’re talking about things now that just a year were unthinkable. Two years ago, unthinkable. And that’s because Catalonia has forced them to make changes. In the future, Catalonia will impose a negotiation. And they will have to negotiate sovereignty.

How do you see Catalonia’s chances for becoming independent?

The process will continue, that is clear, the millions of Catalans aren’t going to disappear, although they may be bothersome to the powers of the State, they’re not going anywhere. So the process will continue. And I think it will end up in a negotiation of sovereignty. I believe Catalonia is going through a process of self-determination. Like always, it will have to do so within some limits. It will have to evaluate its possibilities. It will have to evaluate losses and benefits. But Catalonia is already a self-determined nation. It’s already doing what it wants. Within the limits in which it finds itself. But it has free will. So I think it will end up in a negotiation of its sovereignty between Catalonia and the Spanish State.

And Galicia?
Galicia has had a very different history, and one that is much more fragile. Galicia has no ruling class. It’s incredible, but the only way to understand Galicia is that you have to go back 500 years when Isabel steals the throne of Dona Joana, who they called the Beltraneja, and they get rid of the Galician ruling class, they subjugate the Galician ruling class, it was what she called the “domestication and castration of the Kingdom of Galicia”. Thus, the destruction of the Galician ruling class was a vacuum, during centuries, and when the bourgeoisie was reconstructed in the cities and on the coast, it was a foreign bourgeoisie. And curiously, in good measure, well, you can’t explain the processes of industrialization in Galicia without the Catalans. The Catalans played a fundamental role in the 18th and 19th centuries in the process of industrialization in Galicia but they were people who came as if this were a colony. They established themselves here but they didn’t identify with the country. And that has remained until the 20th century. The memory of the social classes—there is the memory of individuals, but social classes also have memory—the Galician bourgeoisie was made up of foreign families who mostly didn’t identify with the country and so it didn’t give rise to what did happen in the Basque Country and in Catalonia where there is a bourgeois class that took on projects about their respective countries, because they identified with their own countries. That just hasn’t existed in Galicia. And it still doesn’t exist. And thus the national demands of Galicia have always existed—from the 18th century, from Sarmento and Feijóo and the enlightenment, and the intellectuals of the 19th century—but it was always a movement of intellectuals who addressed a nation of working people, farmers, or factory workers, but working people, and in the middle the social, urban group that was missing was the bourgeoisie, which is really the class that undertakes nation building. And so, it’s really hard, Galician politics is historically very weak, it’s structural, very difficult.

How does the way history is taught affect the situation?
Language and history are collective identity markers. So, sure, there’s a battle for controlling history. In fact, in the case of Catalonia you can see how they are arguing with the Catalans about their historic arguments but it’s also true that this has forced them, what Catalonia is planning has forced them to revise a portion, a very small portion of Spanish historiography. Spanish history, like practically all histories, is fundamentally mythical. They criticize the Catalan, Galician, or Basque history and they criticize the ideological background, but Spanish history is mythical and ideological from tip to tail. May 2, in Madrid, that whole thing, even in recent memory, in anti-Francoism and the struggle for democracy, the role that Catalonia played doesn’t appear corresponding to the measure it had. In order to win the existing liberties, the mobilization of the Catalan civil society was decisive, like the struggles in the Basque Country. And of course the workers movements, the struggles in Ferrol, in Vigo, in Madrid, in Pamplona, in Seville, workers movements all over. But it was without a doubt the absolute dissidence of Basque society against Francoism and the massive demands for democracy and freedom from Catalan society. That was the key element that made it necessary to change. And that is not recognized. The biggest demonstration in all those years took place in Barcelona. The one about the “Freedom, Amnesty, and Statute of Autonomy” (1977) and that’s just not part of the Spanish memory.

Do you get a lot of flack for defending Catalonia?
Well, you can say that I’ve gone through the school of hard knocks. I value my freedom and I do everything I can to defend it. My freedom of thought and to feel personally free. And so it helps me to say what I think against the current, that helps me, because then I’m free of temptations that institutions or power centers that wish to absorb me. It’s obvious that I make them uncomfortable, I’m a worrying figure, but I’m uncomfortable for everyone. And that allows me to say what I think, my freedom, but obviously it was very tiresome. It has been very tiresome, today and always. The truth is it has been pretty bad. I’ve had a rough time. In Galicia, I’ve had a rough time. I’m not going to explain things that happened to me but I had a very rough time. But I’ve survived. I’ve always survived. And I’ve said what I wanted.

There are so few from outside Catalonia who raise their voices in its defense.

Look, I started writing in the 90’s in Galicia, while they still let me, before they kicked me out. The press here. I wrote, and I said what I thought about Galicia and about Spain.

They kicked you out of the press in Galicia?

Oh yes, yes. My name was forbidden, and my books as well. I was living on my books, probably better to leave out the details. But what I mean is that, from the 90’s on, I was able to publish some things in Madrid. And I remember that in Diario16, which has already gone under, I published an article titled “For a federal, open Madrid”, but I was already seeing the change of the Spanish political system and the role that Madrid played. And what I said was that Madrid was already not playing the part of capital, of a capital that could be everyone’s capital, and I was pointing that out. And I kept writing, in the 90’s and in the first decade of 2000, in the Madrid press, in the leading papers, while they let me, of course, and I wrote in defense of the Spain of Paco Ibáñez, another article I remember was called “Don’t let them steal Madrid from us” in which I defended that it should be a capital for everyone, that could serve everyone. I was always worried about where this was all going. But, of course, at that time, they published those articles of mine, it’s true, but today they don’t. In that era, they published me but I was a bother. And they called me out. And my position ran out, logically.

But the truth is, I was right. Because whoever wanted a Spain in which nationalities and individuals all fit, and where people with different identities, languages, and interests could coexist, I believe would recognize that I was right. But of course, I was very uncomfortable for them.

It’s really sad.

In those years, democracy in Spain was in the balance. And that’s why I supported Zapatero because he offered a chance for democracy and for dialogue. And in fact, since Suárez no one has been attacked more harshly and more cruelly than Zapatero. Unfairly treated. Zapatero touched a nerve. He brought up the recognition of Catalonia, the Statute, the dialogue with Maragall, and with the Statute he was looking for a way to make Catalonia fit. That touched a very sensitive nerve. And the Law of Historical Memory touched another nerve. And gay marriage, or parity of men and women. There are things that didn’t affect the structure of the economy, of the economic powers, but that affected the profound pro-Spanish ideology. I mean, look, it was already an anomaly that a President of the Spanish Government could be a fan of FC Barcelona. That was just unacceptable. How were they going to accept that when they are all fans of Madrid? You have to be a fan of Real Madrid.

And so how did he win?

Well, there was a moment of crisis in the Socialist Party and there was a vacuum and a person appeared in that vacuum who had a project. It was clear that he had a project. But it’s also clear that his project wasn’t shared by a large portion of his party. That’s also true. So they took what they could get although many of the people in his party had never had confidence in him. But you have to keep in mind that in the Socialist Party there were people like Rosa Díez! Rosa Díez was trying to make it into the Executive of the party. There were people like José Bono who’s recently been talking about suspending the autonomies. People like Francisco Vásquez, of Opus Dei and real estate corruption.

So where is the real left now if all these people are in the Socialist Party?
Well, the PSOE has the left within it. It’s a part of the society. It’s real. But what happens is that at the same time, the PSOE participates in the state ideology. And the state ideology is pro-Spanishism. For some, pro-Spanishism is fundamentalism based on Catholicism, in other people it’s secular, but it doesn’t matter, the ideology is pro-Spanishism. And then within the PSOE there’s a little of everything. You’ve got to imagine that when you’ve got someone who was minister not too long ago asking what good it is to speak Catalan, implying that it’s not worth anything, that puts you in a whole new kind of situation. You can’t identify that with the left. They have to be identified on the right. Ignorant, anti-democratic people. But it’s true that within the PSOE, there really are leftists, there are people who believe in social change, in dialogue, who might be disposed to listen, to recognize that there might be other people who have a different language and who think differently and who defend other projects. You can’t deny that within the PSOE, there are democratic and leftist people, next to all the rest, that we already know about.

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