In the interview you wanted to take us to the palace of Intsausti.

If I came back to the novel, I had to come to Intsausti. One of the main symbolic spaces of the novel, along with any other industrial polygon of the valley, is the Palace of Intsausti, the house of the Count of Peñaflorida, the headquarters of the Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País. As far as industry is concerned, that is the essence of the crisis, from start to finish.

The Intsausti Palace has recently welcomed the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Association of Friends of the Country. In his speech, not a single noise of the uprising of 1766 was heard.

How! Talking about the one should not stop talking about the other. No one doubts the advances brought by the Count of Peñaflorida on issues of science, medicine, etc., but the history of the revolt must not be concealed. Count of Peñaflorida, José María Díaz de Haro, had called for the death penalty for the rebels, when there were hardly any injuries! This is what historian Alfonso de Otazu says in his book The Repression of the Rebellion of 1766, and in the letters of Father Esterripa, and in the statements at the trial… In the twentieth century, the first one who spoke about it was Ildefonso Gurrutxaga. If you want to talk about the revolt of Azkoitia and Azpeitia, Gurrutxaga is key.

Where appropriate, also Ramon Etxezarreta…

In the early 1980s, Etxezarreta, who was a councillor at the Azpeitia City Hall, launched new projects. For example, a collection of books. It's Pako Aristi's first book. Etxezarreta, among other things, mentioned that revolt; “it is the time that is worth analyzing,” he said... The history of the insurrection has not been transmitted, Ildefonso Gurrutxaga was in the head, Ramón Etxezarreta also, there is a press article by Leo Etxeberria… They are fireflies in the dark night. Then came David Zapirain, Iñurrategi, Fernández de Albadalejo… It is a world that has not been told. The Knives have passed us, it was given the name of Xabier Munibe to the ikastola of Azkoitia, the Count of Peñaflorida has been made the head of lead, the plaza has been offered to the Knieritos… The town that was on the other side of the case has been given a nice cover.

Why hasn't it spread?

Because the revolt forces you to analyze history from an economic point of view. There is nothing more to see who promoted the Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País. Following Gurrutxaga’s denunciation, Areilza was one of the main drivers of the fall of Bilbao after the war. How would you look at the demands of the rebels? From the Royal Academy, the same thing. The imaginary to promote was the one that the savings bank albums offered to us when we were children. Blas de Lezo, Elkano, Okendo, Urdaneta, Ignacio de Loyola… This world: “We have been us!” as he said. Yes, “we have been ourselves and, moreover, we have been the essence of Spain!” Spain is the fruit of the economic pact between the Basques and the Castilian people. That world that Joxe Azurmendi denounces in the Late Manifesto. Azurmendi, Arestiri, those organic body builders without Txillardegi are entertained in a “Basque issue”, and the rebels of 1766 bring them nothing but dirty.

You have brought it to light, making literature…

It had material on two planes. There was the history of the insurrection, yes, but, on the other hand, I was worried, lately in our valley there have been major blows. Crisis, factory lockdown, sad people... One called the other: this time it's savage neoliberalism, and then it's the beginning of liberalism, the end of the old regime, the end of the moral system. The social pyramid was in effect: the one below, lived in despair, was poor and it was up to him to accept his destiny. But the superior was obliged to observe a moral rule and, consequently, to monitor the inferior, the subject, in part. With liberalism, this system began to rise. Etymology lies, liberalism has nothing to do with freedom. And in these changes it is the plain people who are hit in the lagar. It's no coincidence. Indigenous communities also rose in Chiapas for reasons similar to those of the Urolalde rebels.

There is the jungle of your Zapata, the work of yesteryear…

The rebels of 1766 are also content with the Zapatista. They don't intend to get power. “Don’t treat people like that!” they say. They claim dignity. In our valley, and in the time of 1766, the things that were asked for in the first days were two: on the one hand, to lower the price of grain in order to be able to eat; today the same thing happens in Mexico. It is enough for corn cake to get a few pennies, so that the street is burned down. In 1766, another request was to introduce a single measure, rather than two different measures. The older ones behaved like the banks today: when they buy dollars, expensive; when they sell, cheap. Same with the grain. They denounced speculation.

Then it was wheat…

And the others. The insurgents managed to get the caciques to pass a single measure and then began to ask for other measures, such as the suspension of the fines they had previously imposed. This is seen in the statement by the Marquis of Narros before the judge, in which it is stated that some rebels asked for the large expanses to be dismantled. In a way, an agricultural reform was called for. And more, let the municipal plenums be opened, let them be held in the plaza and let each person have one vote. There is a certain political concern there, which has nothing to do with social justice.

The Cavalry of Azkoitia are frightened in your work.

That is why they launched with such impetus against the rebels. They wanted to cut the movement to the root so it wouldn't open. And yet Eibar, Mutriku, Errezil spread... Knights were greatly offended by the people’s behavior. “We take care of you so well, and you, in return.” This attitude of the lords to treat those at the bottom with mercy. Piety is indeed inexorable, inexorably grateful. It looks like it does. There is no justice in it. This is clearly seen in the statements of Narros or Enparan: they are angry because they have been given a “dirty wine” to drink; or because they have been forced to kiss their hand – that is, the gentlemen forced them to do it themselves! – or because they did not take their cap off when they pass… It is an offense, an intimidation, which led the lords to vengeance.

Azkoitia is your town, you have revamped what happened in 1766, but making literature, novel, but not historical novel…

I needed the counterpoint, the rebellion and the repression then, on the one hand, this frustrating wave of today, on the other, but at once, to confuse both and turn the past into the present. I didn't want to have two stories. If so, I would have asked for another approach, I would have worked longer, I would have sought a forced balance, and I wanted a story. And to do that, you have to throw away the two eras to make it the only narrative. In that, the opportunity offered by delirium comes to me… It is the image of the dish, if you want: with a deep dish, on the one hand we have the flap; there is the time. And deep down, we dreamed, and that time… It was not worth spreading for today’s sake, people know it, they know it: the valley is touched, it has hit bottom. It's another novel. We tend to show the past in black and white, but I think it needs it the other way around: then, in color; now, in black and white. We don't know too much of Esteban Alberdi's news today, it comes little by little, it's loneliness, it's rapist, while when we go into the past, everything appears with another vitality, fresh social, hope, punishment. I've tried to make that contrast.

Teresa has as much prominence as Esteban Alberdi, who was her wife in the present, and her wife in the past…

As for the past, Teresa takes strength. There is only one analysis of the old documents to see the strength of the woman in the revolt: there is the women's prison in Zaragoza, for example. I wanted to mark this presence of women… On the other hand, Esteban, both in the present and in the past, is half asleep in both cases: in one, by beating his head; in the other, by being sick, by Navarros. In the novel, that man would delude from one side to the other, and what really deals with everyday life is the woman. Teresa both in the past and in the present. That's why I've launched myself to blur the two times and, at the same time, two main characters: you gain strength when you disappear.

Teresa has more flames than Esteban…

Teresa rises up. The present Esteban is desperate in the hole, not organized. Despair is great, or individualism is the fall of the individual.

I have read that April is a social novel somewhere…

She should have what she has about social. The novel ran the risk of Manichaism, on the one hand putting the sympathetic, and on the other hand the antipathetic. But in the unpleasant ones, you also need your own color. Peñaflorida and Narros are not the same, and the mayor of Donostia-San Sebastián, Arriola, also has his reasons and his own actions in the City Hall. Among the rebels, too, there is everything. The writer is obliged to move away from the misery of this level.

Social and psychological, written in the style of Iñigo Aranbarri: language, accuracy; gaze, gaze, acute; writing, elegant…

I probably don't know how to write otherwise. It's about getting a personal style. If that is achieved, it is enough. We are not going to start saying whether April is difficult, it is not, because that would harm ourselves. I've chosen expressiveness. I have recovered the lexicon, there is also a dictionary of this valley, which is certainly the dictionary of the Basque Country batua. Conversations are short, not very fluent, perhaps because our way of speaking is too. I do not believe, however, that it has tightened the text too tightly. You have the risks that the writer has to take... Anyway, I think the writer has to write as best as he can. I know there are people who could have an 800-page book with this riot. It’s not my style: I’d rather resign briefly, remove my leftovers, watch the rhythm… Writing goes with society. Txomin Agirre had to explain a lot, because people didn't know it, on the one hand, but mostly because he was a great moralist. So many causal-explanatory. Today you can't act like this...

"What a man! Seven and a half feet long, right at the image of the chopo tree”…

Don’t wait for this in my job…

You had the theme, you've worked on building the novel, the writer...

Someone could even make a chronicle. It would be a very different book. It could be very nice, but I wanted the game of literature: to blur characters, to live what a person of the past lives today, the gestures that are made between those two stories… and the questions. Questions always. Why does a standstill here feel closer to the desperate worker who is setting fire in Greece than to a colleague of his? The one in the direction, the one who is making the lists of those who go to the street... There's universal empathy.

Few heroes in the corners…

These are people who have been hunted down, robbed by alcohol, depressive, who have run out of tenderness to start a relationship. The economic situation conditions what we are. The other day someone said to me: “Iñigo, I have named and named all the characters in this novel.” I have not done so with that intention, but whoever has followed this period of economic downturn of these years has met people like Esteban Alberdi, more than one. I find it terrible that the reader should come to that conclusion, but so does the literature. Literature is an invention, but often you can't help but attack reality.

We have been able to make a novel about the history of rebellion…

It is also one of the duties of literature. The memory of history has been on the surface in recent years. However, there is another big issue. We cannot ignore the conflicts and personal portraits generated by the economic situation. We will hardly find a more appropriate situation to talk about the human condition, to delve into contradictions. Here's the writer's work, how to get all that out in the sun with a clear aesthetic wager, how to hit the reader in one sentence ...

You used the word justice recently…

Because in this matter of rebellion a great deal of injustice has been committed with the people. People had been fired at Oran for punishment, imagine, even Algiers. And Ceuta. Women at the Reformatory of Zaragoza. Most of them wouldn't come back, I assure you. The people died, died, was murdered, died in bayonets in Hernani that Urreta that appears in the novel that leads to San Sebastian, was sixty years old, was a shoemaker… And the most serious injustice: the silence of the years. So in the novel, I've tried to take out real names, I haven't tried to invent fictional names. In Azkoitia Garagorri, Txaldako, Brigida... In Azpeitia, an unknown Imilaun – hardly could have guessed anything better – Xaxarki, Akotegi… There are still his successors… Other names have unfortunately been lost… These in the rebellion and, in the meantime, others are preparing for repression. The Zapatistas, as naïve as our darkened eyes, didn't they see what was coming to them? The repression was financed by the Consulado de San Sebastián and the Real Compañía de Caracas. They were surprised by one of the creases of history.