You don't have to take a writer's statements very seriously during the presentation, but you have to start somewhere: You say that you have regained the pleasure of writing with too big a heart.

I’ve been without writing the fiction for a long time and I was a little afraid: I’ve lost my hand… In this time I’ve asked myself many times: “Write for what?” But once I started, I realized that yes, I still like it, and things happen to me when I write.

Have the answers to this “why” question changed you a lot since the first books?

A little bit yes. On this occasion I have written not so much about the things I care about as I think others will like. After all, the first book is always an adventure, knowing what it is to be a writer, etc. Then the second and third were written in some inertia, and I thought this long arrest would be counterproductive. But I think no, convictions have also been strengthened. We have a lot to tell, and I have to write. We have not touched, wounded or expanded many territories and spaces with literature. In addition, they cross in someone like me – of a certain age, of a certain gender, of a given territory… – many axes that can be interesting or at least can serve to look at them from another perspective. In this sense, I have written it reinforced, broadening the perspective.

The story The Heart Too Big is the Longest. It's common for you to take a story to the title, and if I'm not mistaken, you've done it with all the books. Is it a laziness or does the title well collect the essence of the book?

There's something I can't or fuck, a difficulty putting titles, yes. I find it hard to understand each other's titles well. But on another level, these two words capture the tone of the entire book. It refers to a disease or a defect, but at the same time it is linked to the love of the heart in the occipid, and in addition, this “too big” also means lack of suitability.

The characters in these stories have desires and thoughts that rarely recognize themselves, but it's hard not to feel a certain empathy. Do these kinds of characters attract you and you can't dodge them, or is there a choice behind them?

I think it's they who find me, but we're also the real ones. The most anodine person around us will also surprise us with who knows what. I do not think, therefore, that the characters in this book are unusual: they are as rare and simple as everyone else. But maybe I've caught them at a bad or unusual time.

Sometimes it is explained explicitly, sometimes not, but there are many stories that are in your closest reality. Geographically at least: Donostia, Hendaia, Errenteria…

It seems to me that there has been a tendency to flee from Basque literature: from people with names and surnames like ours, from people where people like us live… Alicia de Vancouver, Jack from where we do not know where… With our names, in our villages, I wanted to make known people who have problems like ours. This realism attracts me a lot: this opportunity to turn our misery into something else gives me pleasure.

It's been seven years since you published cats. In his doctoral thesis, he analyzed the work of Joseba Sarrionandia and its relationship with the sea. Has this work influenced these stories?

Partly yes. Looking for three years at the work of another writer gives you a perspective: with your work, with your language, with the place where you live… That has influenced me for good. At the same time, I lost the fear of being wrong. I had to write the thesis in a very short time, bringing it forward every day… You also work with another purpose and record, but it has been a kind of exercise of gymnastics that has helped me strengthen the muscle.

You've also studied film. If one of the characteristics of the audiovisual language is the exposure of thoughts or reflections with facts and images. Although in literature it is easier to put words to reflections, you also frequently resort to images.

Literature, the literature of thought, which has a lot of weight in the intellectual reflections of the characters, bores me a lot. So I'd rather read the essay. It is true that film, in general, takes another path, but so do many writers: In America, on the other side of the Atlantic, it is mainly counted through actions and dialogues, and I am also more comfortable.

Gorka Arrese, editor of Susa, explained that in this book there are more stories than in the past because you have grown up as a writer.

On this occasion, I wanted to tell more of a story in a story, and that means I need more space. The stories of more pages have come out because I wanted to tell what I wanted to tell. The starting point of the last story is that a mother tells her daughter that her hands are not theirs. That could make a short and effective story, but that wasn't what I wanted to tell. I wanted to say or show more things: the distance between the two bodies, the distance between mother and daughter, the tendency that both, although very differently, had to move away from their origin.

By the way: this is not the first time you have worked with Arrese, but it will be one of the last edited by Susan. What has the process been like?

It's been easy. It was very present, but not on top. She has respected my rhythm and I would say that I have also respected yours. He too, like me, has improved with age, and we've understood very well. We've been laughing a lot along the way, and even in my neurotic moments, I've been able to calm down. It makes me so sad that I leave Susa's editor job, really.

You've recently written the importance that bodies have had in this Absolute Bertsolaris Championship. In your stories too, bodies are very present.

I've read a lot of literature written by black people, especially when I was working at the Txalaparta editorial, and writing about the body is something that black writers do a lot. Smells, shapes… Especially women. I believe that there is a desire to touch, smell and bring to paper others, that is, to become tangible, visible. In my case it has not been an intentional action, but a posteriori I realized that yes, the descriptions of the bodies, the characters that play with them, have room in the book. The cover of the book also represents it.

It is true that Basque literature has given many storybook books, but it still seems that a writer has not taken a definite step until he writes a novel. Are you considered a storyteller?

If I had a better ear, I could write poetry, or if I was more chatty, maybe I would turn to the novel. But perhaps the gender that best adapts to my personal characteristics and my living conditions is that of the story. It's neither better nor worse. It is true that it does not have the same prestige as the novel, but it offers other possibilities. I read everything I've read, that's right. I'm not at all rigid.

He doesn't write the essay, but he works to promote it through the Eskafandra collection.

We began to meet four friends from the world of culture, without any particular purpose, to share some concerns that linked culture, Euskera and feminism. The group gradually grew, and in the end what has come out of it has been a collection that aims to translate to the Basque Country books that for us can be of reference in feminism. But the challenge is not just that: to promote these books and to reconcile the struggles that exist in them with our own. It has a vocation to influence today and here, to propose ways to think about the world. We just pulled out Caliban and Silvia Federici's witch, and it's a great book, which marked me a lot.

He also participated in the team of the literary program Sautrela, which has been removed from ETB in the last edition. “They are driving cultural illiteracy with great success,” he said in Berria.

Literature is a devalued space, and that's not only natural. There are some decisions that modulate us every day. They've wanted to modulate us so that we don't care about literature, and what we have is their counterpart. This is because of the disastrous cultural policies. It is a community suicide programmed, not only with literature, but also with culture and language. I get angry with this issue.