Remember what was your first contact with Antiquity? I always say the same thing: my father
made me the classic philologist. Surely unintentionally, if he had known, he would have tried to convey his love of law or medicine. But well, when I was a kid, every night they told me a story, once I started telling myself Odyssey.

How is that? The truth is, everything came from television. They offered cartoons about
Ulises, located in space. So my father said to me, that's not the real Ulysses, and he started telling me Odyssey: the journey, the history of cyclops, Kalipso -- I was three years old and I was fascinated. I didn't know it was a classic, I didn't know who Homer was, and I didn't care about the cultural importance of the classics. No more, I found it a shocking story. The truth is, for a long time I thought Odisea's author was our father.

Look!
He told me verbally, without books in his hand, with his words, a story or anecdote every night -- he thought he invented it. The connection with the classics came to me through orality, that millennial tradition of storytelling.

And now, from an adult's point of view, what do you think Odyssey has to bruise
so many people? The truth is, I've never stopped looking from the child's perspective. This child's eyes have survived even after the arid field of academic studies, and I still feel the excitement of that little story. But in response to his question, I like Odyssey exactly, because I think it catches very well human nature. Ulysses wants to go home, they feel their lack, and we all understand that, but at the same time it's an appetite for adventure. So when you go home, you entertain yourself. And I think people are like this: we need security, but we also want adventures. We want to drown, but so do Troy.

After studying classical philology, he did not follow the academic path. Why? The truth is, I wanted to continue along the academic path. There are many officials in my family, and although they've always broken my creative party, they've also told me that it's reasonable and that I'm looking for a fixed job, and then, if I wanted to, I could write it in free time. Especially for my mother, it was an obsession that I made an opposition, and I understand it, because she knew the obstacles that we have women in this world, and so she told me that to get something safe,
nobody could take something away from me, and then the ones of the future. So my intention was to go into college to have that job safe and reassure my mother, and then write it apart.

But? But when I finished my PhD, in fact, I should have applied for a postdoctoral scholarship, and that has to necessarily be done abroad. At that time my father
became ill with cancer and I decided to stay in charge of it, my parents were separated and I was the only relative my father had in Zaragoza. When they gave her the diagnosis, they told us she only had one year left and I decided to stay. In the end it was three years, and when I returned to academic life it was no longer competitive, there was a gap: three years without publications, without congresses...

Surveillance is penalised. At that time, I had not thought for these cases, if anyone wanted to pause to have a child or take care of the closest ones, for example, and I think these situations should be
taken into account; the academic trajectory is demanding, but sometimes you have to stay, and maybe those years should not be taken into account. But look at the last five years, and since I was three years in a vacuum, I lost the train, so to speak.

You entered the world of journalism. Why? I had to start from scratch and do something
else with the studies of Classical Philology, with those studies that are of no use to anyone. So I came up with journalism. I went to the newspaper Heraldo de Aragón, the local newspaper of Aragon. In his day, he was led by Guillermo Fatas, a former professor of Ancient History at the faculty. I proposed that I would start writing columns: I would talk about today's issues, but relating it to some myth, Antiquity or etymology. To address news or big issues from another perspective. He liked the idea and told me to test it. So I started, without certainties, but wanting to offer my gaze.

What can this approach bring? Sometimes it seems to me that, when looking at the past, this discourse of learning from mistakes or not repeating mistakes can be a good purpose, but also a vacuum. Yes, of course, it's much
more complex than that. However, it seems to me an interesting view. In addition, those of us who have studied and researched at the public university, I think we have a responsibility to bring to the public debate what we have learned, so that the facts are analyzed from a somewhat more complex and less simplifying perspective. It is not a mechanical thing, of course, it is not “this mistake we have made and it will not be repeated”. But ultimately, democracy is a mode of communication, and philosophy, history, philology and humanities, even if they don't offer magic solutions, can help the debate so it's not that rough, so it's a little bit more careful, and not always from shock. It can also serve to dismantle some fallacies, deceptions and manipulations of the past, as political arguments are sometimes built upon them.

The truth is that I have not read much about Antiquity, it has always seemed to me that it is far away. But if you are mediators (you, Anne Carson, Mary Beard...), and what you have written about those times has awakened my interest. It's striking,
we're all women.

Yes, that also wanted to ask you, to see if you see something in it. First of all, I will answer the question of mediation or disclosure. I think this task -- facilitate, help -- is very
important in college. Today, if you are considered a discoverer, you are believed to be a secondary researcher, you are not an original researcher, which works with direct sources and technical words. Disclosure is despised. But it's very important. Everything we've researched is useful for today's society, because it has to do with your life, even if you've never learned Latin or Greek: it has to do with your concerns, with your day to day, with your passions, with the eternal questions we ask each other. We're basically talking about that, and that matters to you and everybody cares.

And, going back to what we have mentioned before, what do you think there is so much woman in the current spread of Antiquity? It strikes me, yes, and I often think of that contradiction. The ancient
Latino world was profoundly misogynistic. If you and I were born in Greece or in Rome of the time, we could not be writers, we could not come here to give lectures, as I come today. We would be outside the circuit of the word, the word was a thing of men, and that is explained very clearly in many ancient texts.

So? So? What kind of revolution has happened so that we women are the ones who turn to these myths? Perhaps all this is because we
are able to approach it from a more critical point of view; we do not idealize, and we do not present the Greeks as models, unlike the researchers of the 19th century. We see the lights and shadows of the Greeks and Romans, their problems, their conflict, their tensions -- where seams explode. Let's reread those myths and interpret them differently. For example, about Helena de Troy it has always been said that she was a beautiful woman, but she was actually a woman kidnapped and forced several times, treated as a commodity, as a war trophy.

In fact, Anne Carson has a play titled Norma Jean Baker of Troy (by Norma Jean Baker Troy) that addresses the story of Helena, but replacing Marilyn Monroe. I found this conciliation very interesting. Yes, the number of times history wars have appeared imputed to a
woman is also striking. We see this chain of female guilt (Eba, Pandora, Helena...) and it is clear that these myths remain alive in our society. So it's interesting to go back to myths as compact interpretations of the world. They reflect an idea, a concept, and you can oppose the myth or turn it around, relate it to the current -- With the Argentine poet Inés Ramón, that's what we did in The Morning Barefoot (Goiza ortozik): look for female myths and relate them to the present.

For example? For example, there's Kasandra. He made predictions about
the future, but they didn't believe him. Not believing the women's testimonies, not valuing their contributions, that's also a topical issue, right? And then there's another play, Trois from Euripides, about the price women pay in war. And the tragedy of the Regator of Esquilo, where some women arrive in Greece to escape the violence of their husbands. And here we work on male violence, exile, migration ...

Myths are similar to universal grammar, that's the good thing; they can be very useful to talk about our traditions, the stories that have built us and the anecdotal pillars of our civilization. So it seems to me that you can make very interesting looks and criticisms to rethink the world we live in.

This afternoon [February 23] will offer a conference here in Pamplona, together with Fernando Rey, which has translated the Basque Infinitua into a joint. You'll talk about translation. I believe that in our
society we do not value the trade in translation sufficiently. I've asked all my editors to put the name of the translator on the front page, and today I find it incredible that not all publishers do the same. Translation is a very complex task, as it must reflect not only the meaning, but also the rhythm or music of the text.

What do the translations give us? For the reader, translation is a tool that allows him to free himself from his borders; if we could only
read works of the languages we understand... Let's think of the important books of our life: if we had no translation, could we have ever read? Surely not, therefore, without translation, the world would be a poorer and more provincial place.

You wanted infinity to be translated into a jungle in all the languages of the Spanish State, right? Yeah, it was a dream for me to get that, and I asked the agent to try. First he translated into Catalan, then into Galician and then into Basque.
Then the Aragonese arrived.

In the case of the Aragonese, there was a clear bet behind it, right? Yes, we wanted to dignify him. Traditionally, Aragonese has been associated with the
rural world and Aragonese speakers have been considered ignorant, which is absolutely unfair and painful. We therefore wanted to make a claim by thinking of those who have suffered this injustice. As philosophy, history, thought, etc. are dealt with in the book Infinity in a joint, we wanted to show that all these things can also be expressed in Aragonese; in addition, at the time of the Aragonese crown, like the classics of Plutarco, they returned to Aragonese, so it is a prejudice that cannot be done in Aragonese. I believe that there is a clear commitment to minority and marginalised languages. Languages are wealth, the architectures of thought, and we have to make an effort to keep them from being lost.