Arturo Pérez-Reverte: "I don't know if we lived better before, but we were better"

When he arrives at the Royal Spanish Academy, the writer greets the staff with kindness, adjusted to the protocol imposed by the times, and hangs the hat on the hanger that bears his name: Arturo Pérez-Reverte (Cartagena, 1951).It brings under the arm 'The Italian' (Alfaguara), his new novel, a cannon -based cannon that transferDignity and respect, of the Mediterranean.By Elena Arbués and Theseus Lombardo, two heroes in an adventure that devours, marked by love, pain and the sea, with the unmistakable pulse of its author and celebrates the value of sitting down to read.

What took you to 'the Italian'?

I went with my father to see 'his best enemy', a movie set in World War II in which the English are heroes and the Italians are clowns and cowards.I must be 12 years old.When leaving the cinema, my father told me: "Don't believe that this happened: there were very brave Italians".And he, who was a man who knew the sea, told me the story of the Italian divers that attacked the allied ships in Alexandria, Gibraltar...That remained in my head and, later, I began to document myself for hobby.Until, one day, being in the Bay of Algeciras, I saw that there was a novel.

With a powerful central character: Elena Arbués, a young bookstore in the line of conception.

Make her own decisions, fight for what she believes herself, choose why she fights.For 9.000 years, stories have been starred by male heroes whose acts had consequences in women's life.However, Elena is active, the owner of her destiny.Connects with the female hero of the 21st century, which is very interesting and, above all, very lucid, because the woman has paid a huge price to reach places where she had never been.

Topical breaks on Italian soldiers and demystify the English.Is it a way to adjust accounts?

We have been unfair to those Italian soldiers, we always imagine them dehartapados, bungles...But no: they fought bravely and starred in spectacular feats, which is what has led me to settle a kind of debt.He wanted to rehabilitate his memory and honor the people of the Mediterranean.The other day, my friend Raúl del Pozo told me about the book: "It is an amazing claim of the Mediterranean as a homeland".

The homeland: a delicate concept.

I was educated at the time of Spain, a great, free.But he had an advantage: mine was a very reading family.And, of course, when you read...For me, the country was culture, and that of Spain is a Mediterranean culture: the Italians, the Greeks, the Turks, those in North Africa...My homeland was Homer as Virgil or as Dante.I am more in my house in an Istanbul cafetin or in a bar in Naples than in a Hamburg restaurant or in a London bookstore.

But there are people committed to dressing in Spanish.

Already, that is because of the stupidity of the uneducated, of the ignorant who labels according to his little training instead of according to reality, something that is doing a lot of damage to Spain.Sometimes, others do not judge you for what you do, you say or think, but for what they, in their limited intellectual capacity, do, say or think.

You talked about Homer, Virgilio, Dante...They are the readings of Elena Arbués.How do they mark it?

There is an element that is key in the book: she recognizes the hero.I studied from little Latin and Greek, I translated Homer, I read a lot.When I made a reporter and started going out into the world, to witness tragedies, he said: "I already know this".Because I had read it.I saw Ulysses, Héctor, Achilles...The books helped me interpret, understand and digest things.And Elena also has that.His classical training allows him to see the hero in Theseus Lombardo, who, by the way, has enchanted all women who have read the novel before publication.

One of the characters in the book says that "love is overrated".Do you share it?

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Yes.I fulfill the 70 in a short time and I have a more or less moved biography, so there are things that I no longer consider in innocence or naivety.For a long time they have sold us that love is round: "They kiss and are happy forever".Ok, 'They are happy', but maybe not 'forever'.Because then there are 30 years of coexistence, silences, fatigue, infidelity, disease, unemployment, death...Love is complex, it transforms.This is that of my novels, also that of 'The Italian': I tell an adult love story, lucid, conscious.

It is also a story of decent people, of worthy people.

That is decisive.In a world as absurd as this, few things are capable of resisting the proof of truth.And the value, understood as integrity, as dignity, is one of them.It is very difficult to pretend it.You can buy clothes, sex, prestige, image, fame..., but, when everything goes to hell, you have it or do not have it.

Regardless of the side.

Exact.In today's Spain we have reached the extreme of refusing everything to the enemy: it has no virtue, there are only defects.That attitude prevents any possibility of reconciliation.We want to shut up the rival, liquidate it, erase your memory from the face of the earth.I approach the issue again in 'The Italian': the decent, honest and safe people of themselves respect the enemy;fights it, slaughter it if it is what the rules dictate, but respect it.The opposite is hate forever, inherited by generations.

What would your heroes of the social climate think of the 'haters'?

When the really heroes in the garbage, they do not even outrak;They depart and despise it.I, that I have crossed a bay uploaded to a torpedo and I have played my life sinking English ships, I will discuss with someone who has not left home?Go now!In a context like the current one, in which we tend to simplify, it should be said: "No, no, stop and think".That is why it seemed appropriate to underline in the novel the importance of looking for points of view that help us understand others.

Do you think that in Spain it lived better 30 or 40 years ago?

I mean, already in democracy.

Yes.

I don't know if you lived better, but we were better.The decomposition of the social structures of the West had not yet debated us so much.There was hope, we believed that concord, dialogue, conciliation and culture would be available to everyone.But we already know that it won't be like that.The ability to sacrifice, love and solidarity among people, among neighbors!, Has disappeared.

To say this now they call you reactionary, 'rojipardo'...

Yes, 'viejuno'...Do you know what happens?That, at my age, I don't care.I have been in places where terrible things have already happened, and we are on the way to them.Maybe the trip is different, but the destination is the same, and it is very unpleasant.I do not speak of wars, but of moral decomposition.

What is left in front of that?

Knowledge, books, movies, music...They are elements that enrich you, the only tool to support chaos, loneliness, pain, failure, pandemic...When these ministers reduce culture to a porridge that does not feed, which is a demagogic procedure, they condemn young generations not to find intellectual consolation on the day the rides of the Apocalypse arrive.

And is Aposta?

No, it's for stupidity.Look, if it were the plan of an evil one who wanted us.I would say: «Tell me, Doctor no, how has you done it?And how good it has come out! ".And he: «Well, I looked, I set up a conspiracy, I manipulated...".But it is stupidity, pure leave, incompetence.

Are the answers in the classics?

Of course, they are useful.Because in the end we are all Ulysses, or Achilles, or Aeneas...or Don Quixote. Leerlos permite reconocer lo que ocurre a nuestro alrededor y preguntarnos: «¿Qué hizo Ulises cuando se encontró en esta situación?".You may not get out of the trap, but you will understand that life has rules, and that is already a comfort, it is analgesia.There is nothing worse than bewilderment.People run as a surprised headless chicken that there are attacks, earthquakes, pandemics...Only culture allows us to die with dignity.That the volcano erupts?Ok, I played: you read a page from Quijote, kiss your wife and your children and hug yourself while the lava burst your home.What's happening?That's life...