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In 2015, Gabriela Ybarra surprised with a clear and deep, transparent and painful novel.

But always lit.

With feeling, but without resentment.

was the story of two deaths: that of her mother, a cancer victim, and that of her grandfather kidnapped and murdered by ETA in 1977, six years before the author was born.

Now, the story returns as a film.

And

, who was Minister of Culture with Zapatero, returns in turn, 14 years later, as director.

Why go back to the movies? Once you've directed, you always want to go back.

What I have missed most all this time, and which is almost what I like the most, is working with the actors.

I am also convinced that to write well you have to direct. How much have things changed in cinema?

Did you find it easier or more difficult? The main change is the way you reach your audience.

It has completely changed.

But I wouldn't say it's more difficult, we just have to adapt to change.

Those of us in the cinema always complain.

Of course, I do not feel nostalgic for the past at all. His return has been anything but aseptic.

He returns to ETA, a topic that he already dealt with in the film We are all invited, of which he was the screenwriter...When I read

I love it.

It is a text with enormous tension and the narrative thread in two different tenses makes it especially difficult to adapt.

The plot is very thin.

But if you look at it from a distance, the theme of the book is already in my movies and in my books: how difficult it is to communicate in the family;

the transmission of memory;

how the shadow of the unsaid is always distorting the image we see in the mirror. And politics. Yes, more than politics, I am interested in how the political and the social affect intimacy. In a short time we have seen the adaptation of Homeland on the screen, a series about the origin of ETA, the film about Maixabel.

Why now? For 40 or 50 years we have had that duel frozen.

When the band was active,

certain reflections could not be made because it was risky or they were frowned upon or lent themselves to misinterpretation.

The difference is that now they can surface.

They are part of a natural process.

Honestly, I find very few movies.

And then there is the generational change.

Gabriela Ybarra is an author who was born into a democracy.

She is the third generation of a family strongly impacted by years of lead.

The first generation suffers, the second is silent and the third needs to find answers. Would you say that it is comparable to the historical memory of the Civil War? Yes, there are some aspects in common.

In the postwar duels were not elaborated as they should.

And that silence lasted long after until now.

Silence has been a resource for survival. But that historical memory, both that of the war and that of ETA,

it is a continuous source of conflict. Yes, in Spain we have a hard time accepting that someone thinks differently.

It is hard for us to understand that there are people in the world who think differently from us.

The difference in thought makes us feel very insecure.

And that shows that there are issues that we have not resolved well. Is that why ETA continues to be a throwing weapon in Parliament after its dissolution, for example? It is used as an insult.

I imagine that culture has to act against that.

Culture must shed light on the more humane side without playing the game of provocation. Bildu is accused of being ETA and the Government, for relying on them, for using ETA... The escort in the film when the end of ETA tells the protagonist: «It is what we wanted to see happen».

It's a bit inexplicable

because for years we demanded that they do precisely what they are doing, that they be a party that abides by the law and is governed by the Constitution. What remains to be done? My personal experience, since I know the Basque Country very closely, is that the people of the street, the common people, give a message of coexistence that perhaps is not seen in politics. Do you miss active politics? Not at all.

I miss the colleagues and the Councils of Ministers, which were exciting, but no.

It's a very hard life and I think you have to be very grateful to those who are there in the front row.

It is not a rewarding time to be in politics.

Is it worse now? Yes, the feeling I have is that there is much more aggressiveness than before and very little desire to collaborate.

That dynamic is very pernicious.

How do you see the New General Audiovisual Law in full controversy between independent producers and the Government? I'm not up to date at all.

I would not know how to say. His name continues to be associated with the Anti-Piracy Law.

Does it bother you?

Sometimes it makes me angry because the Sinde Law obscures my entire professional career in any other field.

But on the other hand, this shows that the internet is dominated by who is dominated and the technology imposes the discourse we make of reality.

For the internet, that is more important than the movies or the novels that it has been able to do.

Look at Javier Moscoso. Don't you also feel that time has proved you right? I'm glad you told me.

The Law said that what was happening was unsustainable and this has been demonstrated.

Either the regulated channels of commercial exchanges are followed or the consequences will have to be paid.

Internet users believed that they were fighting for freedom and they were not.

In fact, giants were fattened up.

Some habits were installed that, for example, took the press ahead.

The quality of the press. Is it better to work in a Zapatero or Pedro Sánchez government? I have no idea.

With one it has gone well for me and with the other it would also go well. Has justice been done with Zapatero? No, not at all.

Time plays in his favor.

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Know more

• ETA

• Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

• Pedro Sanchez

• Bildu

• Parot doctrine

• cinema