María Dueñas: "Tangier is to blame for writing 'Sira'"

• Interview "It is more difficult for men to break prejudice with the literature that sells"

Under some Spanish-Moorish-style arches, with views of the strait and peacocks strolling through the garden,

sits at a wicker table in the historic Hotel El Minzah.

As did

, the American writer who settled in Tangier in 1947 and who also gave his interviews here, seated on the bar seats, with a drink in hand.

"The fault of

writing

is Tangier. When I left the city I did it with the feeling that here I left many novels without writing," confesses Dueñas on a sunny and hot Tangerian morning.

His is

. A Tangier that was a free port, free of taxes and customs, with its own status as an International Zone: a condominium established in 1925 and in which half of Europe (Spain, France, Holland, Portugal, Belgium, and the United Kingdom) appeared plus United States and the USSR. In that year, María Dueñas' grandfather settled in Tetouan, the city where his mother was born and that the family would only abandon with the independence of Morocco in 1956. "Tetouan was more Spanish and Tangier more international. All languages ​​were spoken here. languages, there was a great freedom of religions: Jews coexisted with Muslims, Catholics and Orthodox ... Foreigners came from all over, many writers and intellectuals. It was a very different Morocco from today. Tangier was full of theaters, cinemas and bookstores where you could find censored books in Spain ", explains Dueñas.

That world that she did not live in was the setting that prompted her to write when she was a university professor. At the age of 44, an unknown María Dueñas published

(2009), a monumental historical novel that has become

(the last , Arabic) and adapted to a series. Four novels later, Dueñas has become the best-selling author in Spain of the last decade, a throne that had belonged to

.

Your secret?

Mix History in capital letters with the smallest stories (the highest level international politics coexists with the lives of seamstresses, thugs and exiles), a dose of drama and love stories (with their betrayals and revenge), plot twists and scenarios that go around the world.

María Dueñas, in Tangier.

While writing what was to be his fifth novel, a trip to Tangier changed his plans.

"I realized that I had imposed a self-censorship. I wanted to talk about Tangier again, although I had already done it in

.

The only one preventing me was me.

So I decided to return hand in hand with Sira.

If not, it would have been a betrayal.

And although it appears at the end, in the fourth part, Tangier was the reason for writing the book, "he admits. A book that begins with a wedding in Gibraltar and the turbulent years of struggle in British Palestine in the 1940s to go through a London destroyed by war, a Francoist and impoverished Spain (with the visit of Eva Perón included: "It was the most interesting thing that happened that year, 1947, in that gray and famine period") and, finally, a very Hollywood denouement in some cliffs of Tangier.

Just six months after its publication,

has established itself as

and eleven editions (the last, of 10,000), in addition to 35 scheduled translations. "I feel very happy with the reception of the readers, it is wonderful," says Dueñas, discreet and sober, every time she is asked about the success of her novels. Despite the stratospheric figures, the role of best-selling writer or diva does not go with her. On the contrary. In the narrow streets of the medina, where she smells of spices and mint, María Dueñas unfolds as if she were just another tangerine. They greet her at the carpet store, at the handicraft stall, at the market ... "Here it is as if time stopped. When I write I return to these streets but in a pixelated way: to an environment, to an atmosphere", he comments as he goes down a steep white alley.

He knows everything about Tangier, its anecdotes and micro-stories. "Those years of international Tangier have been forgotten. Perhaps due to a misunderstood history question: Franco was stationed here and perhaps there is a certain rejection ... But Spain has done very little over the decades to preserve its legacy and heritage. Even Spanish is very forgotten, it has not been maintained, despite the work of the Cervantes Institute and the fact that there are Spanish schools, "laments the writer. It is not about colonial apology but about preserving a culture: "It is not that Tangier was ours, it is that the Spanish were part of the cultural fabric of the city. And we have forgotten." Spanish decadence takes shape in

, inaugurated in 1913. "For decades it was the largest and most important theater in Africa," says Dueñas as he passes in front of the dilapidated building.

The Spanish state let it languish until it practically collapsed and in 2019 transferred it to Morocco, which will begin a major rehabilitation operation to restore it to its splendor.

Because there was a splendid Tangier, through which

, the beatniks A

and so many more

passed

... But in Spain we have forgotten.

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