Santiago Lorenzo: "If money calls money, misery calls misery"

Even celebrated for the presumed modernity, which has turned some of his creations into passwords -let's think of the word

, of his own production-,

(Portugalete, 1964) is actually a concentrate of many ways and means of the literary tradition and Spanish artistic.

And not only because his novels update, in their own way, the phenomenon of the rogue, the guy who "doesn't really know how he's going to get ahead" and who himself has embodied, one could say, jumping from one art to another until he the target of literature.

And even because, in the middle of an interview in the center of

, the man becomes inflamed remembering that «on a plot of land next door there was a house in which

lived , and another on whose stairs the

sat , a character from 'Miau', by

».

The definitive proof is that Lorenzo, who claims to be the repository of that tradition, combining a

costumbrismo with a corrosive humor legatee, for example, by

, begins to give birth to himself in his own novels: «The most crappy character is me , and I love to say bad things about myself, there is nothing healthier».

What is more Spanish than the guy who plots against himself, sabotages himself, returns to the beginning after being one step away from the end?

To know more

The books.

Santiago Lorenzo, refutation and discredit of the killjoys

• Drafting: JUAN MARQUÉS

Santiago Lorenzo, refutation and discredit of the killjoys

Stories.

Santiago Lorenzo: "My only plan is that what I write is not a pain in the ass"

• Drafting: LUIS MARTÍNEZMadrid

Santiago Lorenzo: "My only plan is that what I write is not a pain in the ass"

His career has actually been a bit like that until the day before yesterday.

He went from theater in the 1980s to short films in the 1990s, and he was going "for the hell of it" until he produced and directed his first feature,

, in 1997. What was promised as the trigger for a fruitful film career was actually his tombstone.

Despite the excellent reviews -

went so far as to say that he was going to found a fan club for Lorenzo,

the same -, the movie lasted two newscasts in commercial cinemas, and its author discovered that to make good cinema it was only enough to make good cinema.

«The problem was that I produced the movie, and at that time they did not want more production companies to appear, and they had set up a racket with the distributors to make money with them without anyone going to see them [only with public aid].

It was a huge fall from the horse.

There was no school logic of 'if you study you will do well'.

He was cheated.

Although it was doing well, it was pulled from a bunch of theaters.

Besides, who would believe that she was removed for that?

Everyone was going to think it was because God didn't want to see her.

Five years later your newspaper revealed these practices.

I suffered them in my own flesh.

The disenchantment went to the other extreme: «I tried to make industrial cinema... All that was left was to jump to the other side and it was a horror».

In fact,

(2007) did not share the hilarious and very unique talent of

, and Lorenzo began to accumulate financial problems with a certain lack of direction - he dedicated himself for a while, and still does , to make models for movies, sets-.

Total, who decided to start directing inside his own head.

«I realized that there was no need to hire actors, you locate where you want, there is no budget limit... I should have started writing before!

Also, here the logic of, say,

works : if you do it right, you have a prize ».

From the ominous center of

, where he had lived the faralaes and the crap of the lying world of cinema, he moved to the rural truth of the Segovian village where he has lived for 10 years, and unexpectedly what seemed like a step back were two forwards especially with

, the novel that catapulted him in 2018 to Spanish literary mini-stardom.

Now, again throwing stones at "my own shit", as he says, he has titled his new book

(Blackie Books), as if to laugh even at his shadow -although you already know that the clown always laughs at all of us- .

The plan, the usual: “This is the usual: start with a problem and make it grow, if possible problems that you have had, to come with the documentation already prepared.

It has happened to me, not having a place to drop dead.

If you've experienced the bumps, you know what it's like to push your way out of them."

And what are the problems?

«Love and pasta, always.

The rest are derivatives»

Lorenzo settles accounts with the cinema in the first part of the novel, laughing at the miseries of the guild - "if money calls money, misery calls misery" - seen by a meritorious man who makes his way like a guide, just as he did .

And then -another of his constants- the protagonist flees to

provincial

;

Lorenzo lived all his youth in Valladolid, to accompany a pachucho great-uncle.

And there, the tenderness and discreet dandruff of our inimitable

.

"Our realist tradition is incredible, it's our forte," he says, "I don't believe in interstellar travel, nor in

's hammers , how is that about Thor's hammer?"

Give him a Castilian steppe like the one to which he is going to move shortly after 10 years in

, or the

school in which he enjoyed “from six to 16 years old”, and enjoy not in its generic sense: « I am an atheist as God intended thanks to that school, but I must admit that there was an enormous interest in theater, in art... It was a joy.

We must know the paradoxes that surround us».

Again, the Spanish

at its peak.

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