Things of ours , by the cartoonist Ilu Ros (Mula, Murcia, 1985), is a difficult book to define: a mixture of graphic novel and illustrated newspaper that, through a dialogue between a granddaughter (the author) and her grandmother, runs almost a century of Spanish popular culture facing, as if they were two mirrors, today and yesterday: dictatorship and democracy, emigration and immigration, powerful women and empowered women. A game that allows you to measure the distance between two subordinate times to understand them both, multiplying, in passing, as happens when two mirrors face, the reflection of the singular until it becomes universal.
A book that, from its cover, pushes us to leave Instagram to talk with grandma.
Do you propose to park Instagram for a while to listen to our grandmothers? I do not think you have to leave Instagram, but it is true that we are seeing everything through a screen, and it would be better to talk with people, with your grandmother or with anyone. Because on the internet, in the end, we only see those who are similar to us. Is talking with grandma a way to break the digital bubble? It is not being alone surrounded by people who are similar to you or your generation. I am who I am because of so many things, things that have happened before, even things that have happened in my family before I existed. And talking with grandma is a way of understanding with those who think differently? When talking to a woman about my grandmother's age about feminism, immigration, etc., once the views are different but then, speaking, you find common points. Deep down, although it may not seem like it, we want to understand each other. After several years living in the United Kingdom, he has just returned to Spain. Is your book the only good thing Brexit is going to give us? I didn't come for Brexit itself, but it influences. I knew that I wanted to return to Spain. I left to stay a year and I stayed eight. I lived in London, which is a multicultural island in England, so the day Brexit came out I didn't expect it and I cried. I could put Boris Johnson in thanks for my return, but not much more. Have you been surprised that political correctness has landed in this strong way in Spain? There is much more political correctness there, in London. They have a long history of immigration and I guess it's a way of managing that. But then you see that, even if they are more correct, correction is their way of sending you to hell. They tell you: “It's a little cool, isn't it?” And what they are telling you is: “Close the fucking window!” Borges said that love and hate are equidistant to understanding. Do we need to find that point to talk about Spain? The truth is that I do not understand nationalisms. I don't understand feeling proud of being born in one place or another. Another thing is that you like them and enjoy your roots, your culture, your family, the education they have given you, your grandmother ... the kitchen your grandmother makes! But the love for the country is that I do not understand it. Do we come from fear? I did not live in dictatorship but the vision I have is what they have told me in school and in my family. And talking to my mother or grandmother makes you understand how you lived then. I remind my father to tell me that to buy a certain book that was forbidden I had to go to a certain bookstore. They made readings secretly because the civil guard was coming. To read a book of poetry ... To read poems ... But what madness is this?! Even in totalitarianism the greed for freedom leaves a record in culture ... I tell it in the book: in full Francoism a song that is censored and you can't sing a part of its lyrics, but Concha Piquer goes and sings it the same for her holy ovaries. Censorship puts a fine on her and she goes and pays her. And sing the song again and pay the fine again. There the Piquer is revealing itself against censorship and, on the other hand, the regime is allowing it to reveal itself because it is her. And that is there, in our culture. He tells in his book that others did not have that luck ... Of course: Miguel de Molina had to get caught and García Lorca was killed. And Juanita Reina married at age 39 because her father did not get out of the nose to marry her boyfriend of a lifetime. All that is also in the memory of the grandparents and in their own experiences. They are ways of trying to survive in very hard times. Talking with your grandmother allowed you to understand what real fascism was like, he says, of course, and I am angry that the words fascism are used lightly. But it also depends on the context. If it is a conversation or a joke, everything doesn't matter there. But really, what gives me, rather, is fear. Fear that there may be people who really believe that they are living in a dictatorship. Fuck! Do you know what a dictatorship really is? Well, no, they don't know because they have never lived it ... Do the achievements of the struggle for women's equality look better compared to the world of our mothers and grandmothers? We wouldn't be here if there hadn't been a Clara before Campoamor or even a Rocío Jurado, who told herself feminist. Many others did not talk about feminism but their attitude towards life tended to try to get that freedom they did not have. And that is feminism. Although not named. The important thing is that this is what has made us women now be where we are today. In his book he talks about Corín Tellado. Was Corín Tellado empowered? Corín Tellado made novels of that romantic love that feminism rejects right now, but she was a woman and made many women read. Women who were not allowed to read read thanks to her. And I think: he published five thousand novels and is the most read Spanish writer after Cervantes ... Excuse me ?! Hi?! That woman, at a minimum, must make a monument. How was the creative process of the book? I wanted to create an atmosphere that would help me understand the time it took for my grandmother to live. I read, for example, Carmen Laforet and Carmen Martín Gaite. There is a book of the latter, "Loving Uses of the Spanish Post-War", which tells how female stereotypes were in those times, how they fell in love, how the flirting was ... These books also served as documentation. And that's where the theme of the couplet comes from. Is family memory also in clothes or on records? When I went to see my grandparents, my uncle suddenly stood up with his Rosendo shirt, and made his sandwiches from Tuna with mayonnaise and they were watching TV. And, in the end, you are seven years old and you sit there and you also listen to Rosendo. And you don't choose it but it's also part of who you are. Not only The Planets or Nick Lizard. The couplet and Rosendo. Can culture deactivate the symbolic burden of the past? Is that when talking about Franco, for example, I do not want to talk about him giving him that greatness. So I'm going to talk about you, or your time, in another way. It is important that the memory of all the evil that he has done is maintained but, hey, hey, that here he is remembered with respect is the Piquer but Franco, no. His grandmother, in the book, gives you A tip that I thought was the best advice I've ever heard. Did he really give it to him? Yes, he really gave that advice. And he gave it to me as I tell it in the book. When I told him that I would never marry, he said: "Even if you don't get married, buy a big bed for you to sleep wide" ...According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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