Sale of Alkasoro…

Most people will know what the book says. I find it difficult to do more than I have said before. This paper refers to the accounts of the 1960s and 1970s.

Some accounts.

Lots of stories wrapped in one axis. That axis is, precisely, a character, a boy. He advances throughout his life and tells by his mouth what he sees, what happens around him and what happens to him. We are also given some information from that time, so that the reader knows the years in which concrete things are located. This is the sale of Alkasoro.

That's within a certain geography.

In the Five Villas, or in the Netherlands, in the Bidasoa region, what could happen in any small town in the Basque Country. At least the main character is from there, although he has his legs and legs and moves. Among the stories – even if everything is fiction – there are two hard, painful facts that have marked us in the novel. The two facts, however, really happened, but I have made their version in this book, inserted in the narrative in the form that the story required or has seemed to me.

That's Alkasoro -- in your voice. Anyway, what starts to read and hits the reader first: language. Far from the standard Basque camp.

What do you count, how do you count the other, why is the third? Language, resources. What should I say! I write, nothing else, and before I teach anyone I read the text over and over again, slowly and slowly, and I put the need to detect the music of the text. When I think it's okay, that history goes away, that what I want to tell is well-told, and that, on the other hand, I've worked the way I tell it, I'm OK.

Language, the way to write.

I certainly looked at what resources, what words, what words to use…

Marginal words, among others.

Marginal words or, at least, words that have not so far had the fortune or opportunity to appear in the square of written letters, as I would like to see. My job ends when I feel comfortable. I think every writer is looking for his voice, but apart from that, the character I've chosen to be a storyteller in this case asked me to have his way of talking. In addition to that storyteller, I've tried to do what could be right for everyone. On the other hand, the writer uses the references he has, if he does not have salt, and as far as the reader is concerned, depending on what his reference is, his criteria will be determined by it.

You recently mentioned the voice of the writer. Has the voice of your Chocolate Dynamite changed (Susa, 2001)?

I know more. I also had the middle Basque lost in my youth, and later, I regained my oblivion, I remembered it again. I'm always learning. It's been many years, and I don't know if in today's book I've underlined local language more. In any case, I am happy with the result, seeing that the text is valid for an omnipresent reader. Sometimes I have reminded the reader there, on the side of the Five Villas. I would like there to be many more proud of them than they have, of which I have learned! However, I see that there are some who do not appreciate their treasure enough. I've ever written these things in my head. These are words and expressions learned and stolen from them, some would say: “Do you think it’s nice to see it on paper? It's yours! I've learned from you!"

Does it have anything to do with being a translator with the intention of giving a new direction to the Basque country?

The translator works daily with the language. We look a lot at the details, we are forced to look at them, to sew them all. So when it comes to writing, I write very slowly. I find it hard to be comfortable with what I have written and, even if it is in part, the profession will have to do with it.

Time, place, sky and land – in the law of Txirrita – in the 60s and 70s, Seierrieta, the young Martin Irazoki… Do you have your Macondo Alkasoro?

Something like that can be said, if you want. In fact, it comes beforehand that this territory would provide me with a stage for some characters, and the election has been conscious in this book. However, the creation of the people was by chance. Once I signed a story located in that territory, I presented it to the competition [Tene Mujika], which was called Bota xoxa, which then appeared in Chocolate Dynamite, and instead of putting the known site, I put Alkasoro in. In that chocolate… I realized that the reader was helping him, that I knew where I was going, and that Alkasoro also made me the path of freely telling me what I wanted to tell. That is what Alkasoro has come in my case.

The blow in that story lasts in your work, either in the Chocolate Dynamite or in this Sale of Alkasoro.

I haven't written so much, and maybe that's why I kept what I wrote. The same geography, I mean. There are things that encourage me to write, I have some “seeds” – an anecdote, a passage, a character… – and there are many places where I have known, lived or learned. It's usually a starting point, so I'm starting to develop the story. That's why I've continued in this book.

Life appears in the stories. A violent death that strongly shakes the people of Alkasoro with life.

Death may overshadow the tone of the novel, I don't know. Death, even if we don't want it, is part of life. He has a very important presence in this story. However, the opinions have come to me, some have not found it too sad and others tell me: “Mikel, when are you going to write something more joyful?” They are opinions, nothing else. I realized that those violent events I'm telling you can have a huge influence on storytelling, but I didn't want it, that is, it was just a novel of those cases. I wanted it to be much more than that, and I've tried to make the novel more than the story of those deaths. Along with the main story, I've also brought stories of corners -- as if they were branches coming out of the head -- that are also very important to me.

How much does Martin Irazoki de Mikel Taberna have?

Martin Irazoki is my creation, fiction, but always: What write? What we know. How is it studied? Animated, listened to, stolen… From there I have left. Martin Irazoki has lived my years, but in his own way. It's been down the road that I've traveled, yeah, but from there it creates a fiction, because we want to write a beautiful story, because we want to tell things that serve the reader. At the same time, we want to take to the streets some issues, many that do not happen in the life of oneself. One or the other has happened, but they are always small passages.

In the 1970s, Franco’s death in 1975, the post-dictator era, political change… Always under the eyes of the Pucheros. The civilian guards were always there.

In the life that touches us, their presence is even excessive. They've been, and they're always there. We've heard so many things about the pucheros to our elders, and it's also touched us. We knew they were there, they didn't show up by chance or we weren't surprised, because we knew they could show up at any time and everywhere. We sometimes got rid of ourselves – most of the time, if you want – but others – unfortunately – left serious consequences. The fennels are probably not the characteristic of the Five Villas – or Silias-, but there, with the border, their presence is very marked.

There's Endarlatsa...

How many stories in Endarlaza!

There appears the corpse of Mikel Zabaltza…

Yes. How much we have lived, how much we have arrived with or what we have met. How many deaths have touched us so closely!

Where is the Seierrieta then, that world?

There is something left, but a lot has changed. There are some parts of that world left, some chunks of it, but it's changed strong. The world is changing at full speed, but yet there are things that last longer than we think. I think the thicker lines are a little bit lost. They say that television and school have, among other things, brought about change. Our ways of thinking, of living and relating have changed a lot. I guess so.

What was then Alkasoro, now is in the city and counts the lost world of the city.

In my case that is the case. It's in the head. Childhood, they say, and youth -- the places we've lived -- that leaves a profound imprint on ourselves. Distances are also not terrible, and many like me live there. It's amazing how the county of Pamplona empties itself on weekends, how many people come back to their hometown. Despite being in Pamplona, I don't know if we've had fun. I still do not think so.

William A was in the Five Villas. The anthropologist Douglass in the early 1960s. Etxalar. This society was characterized by exodus.

After the war, those who left the people, even if they remembered the people, were less likely to take the car and go back. People didn't have cars! The one who arrived in the city was almost condemned to live in it, even if he had his head in the countryside.

Alkasoro… I started reading and I thought it was a collection of narratives. Then I knew it was a novel.

I do not attach importance to it. I will not enter into that dispute. Knowing that all the stories were part of something, I decided to be part of it. Perhaps because of my way of working, I have written the text in parts and then I have been structuring everything. For example, it looks like the style of making movies: one sequence here, another there… and sewing. I think there's a total connection, but experts will have to say that it's a novel, it's not. I do not attach importance to it.

One question after another, pleading: What is the question, the state of the situation, the purpose of this book?

I tried to answer in the first question! It was about writing something that people could read with pleasure. Something you like. What's there for that? I wanted to bring that world into this book, those characters and the themes that were underneath them. I was interested in those, so that whoever read the book calmly thought about what was in that world, and that he enjoyed it, with the way of counting, with the narrative, with the language… As examples and references, I could quote others, I would tell him that I wanted to do something like what Federico Fellini achieves in his wonderful Amarcord: invoke a small town and show its characters with the cameras; among them, some silenced events.