Nerea and I first published it in 1994 and republished it in 2015. Here's the reading that allowed me to read again for 20 more years. The protagonist is Isabel, a professor of literature at the University, and the letters she will exchange with Nerea, one of her prey students, are the essence of this novel. The book is divided into two axes: Absence of Luis and presence of Nerea. Isabel is abandoned by her husband when her children, Ander and Sara, are teenagers. Then a young prisoner, cheerful, strong and sensitive, appears in the protagonist's day to day through letters, awakening his consciousness and returning him to life.

Why (salt free), Panpox? Why Panpox de Arantxa Urretabizkaia You can compare the work with the women protagonists of the internal monologue for the abandonment and maternity of the couple. In addition, we have a biased view of the feminism of difference and a binarist view of talking about the nature of men and women. The protagonist feels that man is missing and that his life is tasteless. “Lover yes, but don’t become a man’s server again,” he says. He suffers loneliness until he begins to feel the friendship, help and warmth of another woman.

Price of carol or salt There is also lesbianism, as has been said in the disorderly Desire. In it, the islanding appears as the literary framework of relations between women. In fact, these relationships can represent the resistance to heteronorma in a place without men, such as cards. The relationship between Nerea and Isabel is complicit, a platonic love, a sisterhood away from oppressive reality. The film Carol, which has just been released in the movies, comes to mind. Also in the film based on the novel The price of salt by Patricia Highsmith, there is a tender and mysterious love relationship between an adult woman and a young woman, in a way that lesbianism has often appeared in literature. We are shown the self-awareness of the feelings of love towards another woman: “Love is what I feel for you, a love built at a distance, made of words, without looks, without kisses. A new love that is scary.”

Behind the Marixor salt. The prison is also very present, the lack of freedom, the political commitment. The protagonist sees her life wobbling with the appearance of Nerea. It is a criticism of their “sweetness” situation, these letters have come to awaken those who have been asleep, so that the protagonist reflects on the Basque conflict and the situation of women. Yolanda Arrieta told us Marixor’s story saying that salt is more important than the father, and in Laura Mintegi’s work we can find a kind of confirmation: he says that the oppressed have to face their situation and take the step to turn it around, through love, that is, in his opinion, the engine to move forward, the salt needed to feel alive, “because without passion there is nothing”.