The first reading you remember?

It's not the first, but I remember Jane Eyre from Charlotte Brontë. Every time a girl comes to the library, I always give her, even if she comes to look for something else. I think it marks a milestone.

What a milestone?

I read it at the age of 12, and until then I only read books for young people. But that book made me uneasy. I found out that other things could be found in the literature.

Anguish?

Jane Eyre, in some ways, is a fairly weak book in technical terms, but she has a kind of passion… Every time I read the rooftop monologue, I'm clothed with my hair, and I think she's working on a topic that's very important to women: rabies management. We live in this system, and we can't help but we've never been taught what to do with rabies. We've been told to sit down and stay still, but we bring rage inside. But when we read Jane Eyre, we see how we can use rabies in our favor, and I think that's where the strength of the book lies.

I would like to bring another book up: In 1928, Virginia Woolf published Gela bat norberarena, 90 years ago. Woolf reviewed in this essay the literary works written so far by women and asked future writers to maintain their freedom and their freedom to write. It gave them a period of a hundred years.

I think in this scarce century, women have written great books. Now, however, and this view is mine, and maybe it's a sign of my old age, but, well, now I'd like the writers not to think that they have to be apocalyptic to be interesting. The new generation is totally apocalyptic and dystopian, it leaves us all panting and does not propose any solution. They're fine, but they give you a kick in your stomach... The diagnosis is fine, but we'll have to touch the wound, right? Or sunbathe, we can't live like that. I would say that those female writers think that if they don't make hard literature, they won't take it seriously. I'd like you guys not to think about that, but you're probably right. Maybe what I really want is for the world not to be like that.

After reading the books, sell them. Josune Urrosolo and I opened a library called Auskalo. How did you start?

The Alarde theme brought many good things, among other things, the number of people we didn't know each other. All kinds of relationships were created: relationships of love, friendships… Some of us had the same project. For example, Josune and I wanted to create a bookstore. I could spend my life dreaming of the bookstore without doing anything, but Josune was darker and saw that it didn't take much money to assemble the bookstore as we wanted.

How many years did you do?

Five. It had gone pretty well for us, really. We don't close it for that. It was the early years of Alarde and at six o'clock in the afternoon people sat on the couch and didn't leave until midnight. On Saturdays, on the other hand, we went to second-hand markets to search for books. Outside of this, we had no life. We came up with new work stories, we were tired, and that's why we closed it.

He has also written a book. Especially those referring to the history of Irun. How did you start doing it?

He worked with the theater company Legaleon and they went to Switzerland to create another theater company. L’Alacran. I ran out of work. There was a research prize and I presented a project: I studied the history of the purse seiners. In Irun there was a matchmaking workshop for a hundred years, where six hundred women worked, and I had heard that they had been very powerful, but there was nothing concrete about them. They gave me the prize. Then I kept researching the factories, because it's always been said that Irun had no industry, but I saw that it wasn't like that. Irun is industrializing, but in his own way. Once you start throwing, you find files that you fall in love with, you start tying threads, you become an expert in an era, you get orders…

Research is the way to know what is not known. What did you find?

About Irun, and about the world in general, because I don't think they work differently, although sometimes it seems, I've learned that elites always transform. It's exactly as the gatopardo character says that everything changes so everything stays the same. The elites adapt to the times, they also follow these fashions, but they are always the same. For example, in the 18th century, elite people had to teach it, but now the elites have to be discreet. The Olazabalt, for example, own the largest winery in Portugal and are in all banks, but today, nobody would invent it. [The Olazabal family is a powerful family of Irun: Tranch writes a book about them with Ana Galdos.

I would now like to address a subject that has already appeared on more than one occasion in the interview. We come back to 30 June 1996. That day you came out for the first time in the Alarde. How do you remember that moment when more than twenty years have passed?

That year, I worked on organizational tasks, I didn't outline, but we went with them. As soon as we arrived on 30 June, we had already been crushed by screws everywhere, but up to ten seconds before we left we had the impression that they might not take us wrong. And then, getting to St. John's Square and seeing how they received us was terrible. A revelation. We grew up all of a sudden, or we baked our hair, I don't know, but then we discovered the world we lived in. And after that you can't express, you can't tell how we were able to live for years. We lived on the margins, we received continuous threats, at any time, on any day. We couldn't go to the bars, they would put us every weekend at the door of the silicone bookstore, they would spoil the car, they would mark the portal…

Nevertheless, you resisted it. Where did you draw strength from?

I still feel like I was then, loyalty to those present. We didn't have anybody else, so we couldn't fail, we had to hold each other. Some of them couldn't resist the pressure, and we already knew what it was, you were completely alone. In Irun we could only go to a bar to take a boat, to Kabigorri; they gave us no work… It cannot be explained because it is never interrupted, as soon as we leave the house the looks and insults began. There we saw that the alarde is a microcosm that reflects very well how power acts. There are many resolutions in our favour, but the power has decided that it will not comply with them and has done so. I accept, complies, no.

Hondarribia has been this year the hardest alarm ever. There you were, marching with Jaizkibel.

What has happened this year in Hondarribia has its good side: someone else that we have suffered the whim of pride of the class. All of them have been removing the pride of the class, applauding him, but this year when he has taught his teeth to the cure and others have realized that the beast is no longer at his mercy. And now, what do you do? In any case, all this shows that the system has failed. The Alarde has shown that women cannot rely on the democratic system or the separation of powers, at least in the way it has been organised at present. This system has not protected us women, even though we are right.

Why has it exploded here? Why has it become so bad?

I don't think we're special.

That's why it is.

In other places something else would explode, in other places it would be ampoule. We've touched a bean. Still, we're a complicated society, Irun is an island in everything. We have a special story, a special sociological composition, and I think we have an old and tough confrontation, which has appeared in many ways. In fact, thanks to the investigations carried out, I have been able to see that, before the Alarde conflict, there have been three other similar clashes in Irun. In 1864 the same happened, because the organist of the municipal band was a Carlist and the city council was liberal.

And what did they do then, throw the organist out?

No, Irun always applies the same solution. As an organist, he was the director of the band, because they created a band [laughter]. When he played the liberal band, the Carlists left the plaza and vice versa.

And the other two fights?

Another one turned on with the music band, and the third one was the one that had to do with football. Here were two football teams: Racing and Sporting. Only then was the conflict resolved and now we have a single group: Real Union. That's the question: the king intervened, and that's why the two groups came together. The institution intervened, and that is what has failed in the case of the Alarde.

Is it too late for the institutions?

Urkullu recently referred to the subject, but more radical intervention is needed. However, he has done more than all the previous ones because, at least, he did not say that there are two ways of living the party and that the two are at the same height. Because that's not true. The two ways of living the party are not equally legitimate, at most they can be equally legal. But the party that integrates and excludes people cannot be so legitimate. Urkullu has pointed out where to go, but the institution should give a much clearer idea of the way and where the institution itself is located.

How?

There are precedents. In Donostia-San Sebastián, for example, economic aid was cut. We have an equality law that prohibits discriminatory public shows. It is therefore very simple. But that's not the solution. I do not want to ban traditional scaremongering or ban plastics, I want those behind plastics not to want to take plastic. But for that we have to do pedagogy, and to begin with, we have to do it by those who have authority, that is, those who have classical authorships, those who are experts. We're not going to be heeded, but Urkullu may be. First and foremost, the institution must stop looking only in the short term, that is, exclusively at the forthcoming elections, and it must think what is really legitimate and what is not.

Do you look to the future with optimism?

It's won, I have no doubt. That's right, we're still going to be scared. I look to the future with optimism because we always believed that some of us would die. They went out to the plaza and there were 8,000 men, drunk and with the warm hull, because they had been told throughout the year that it was not bad that they should stick with us. We really believed that someone was going to die, so, compared to what it was then, I'm going to be quiet. On the other hand, see the company Jaizkibel, see the alarm: it's constantly growing and it's full of young people. Of course I'm optimistic, we need time, nothing else. Anyway, I would like to see it with my own eyes and spend years.

So do not repent.

We've had a really bad time, but if we ask any of us if they repent, they'll all say no. I don't regret it. We have been proud, happy and triumphant. Above all, proud: “Even though I’m afraid, I’m where I have to be.” It's what I've felt, and that feeling doesn't have the same in life.