David Lema: "The damage of drugs marked the territory where I grew up"

• David Lema Series Hold Me the Column
• Interview Javier Castillo: "The world of books is very difficult and precarious, a privilege reserved only for a few"
• Literature Javier Cercas: "When Macron told me that the King would come to dinner with Vargas Llosa, I assumed that he was referring to Felipe VI"

Lying along the bay, the sea hits and threatens. On the Costa da Morte, life happens under an end-of-the-world light. Small towns and medium-sized towns. Women and men contoured by the power of the Atlantic Ocean, which cuts with a knife the land at the westernmost tip of the continent. To be born there is to be willing to understand things differently, because time is also different. Because the threat is different. And silence. And defeat. And love. And death.

EL MUNDO journalist David Lema (Cee, La Coruña, 1990) knows well that extreme, that peak of mist where Fisterra can be the 'wild capital' of that west of the water. And there he sets the story of his first novel, 'Los muertos también gritan', published by Espasa. A 'noir' with the necessary ingredients and the sagacity well worked to put together a story around drug trafficking, of an operation of the Civil Guard against two drug lords, and a suicide, and a love that materializes, and a dead junkie whose ghost rages, and an 'orphaned' mother of son, and a diary, and a recently graduated sergeant who takes on the case left unsolved by Santiago Insúa.

Each of the characters drags a wound, a torment, a secret perhaps. And Lema handles with literary pleasure the breakdowns of truthful protagonists, in credible situations, endowed with humanity and harm. They are the gloom of a gloom. They are the Galicia of the other Galicia. They are a human knot where doubts, fears and passions are locked away. The diary of the suicidal sergeant stitches the novel and winds up the astonishment. And it gives impetus to strangeness. And to the humanity of beings also designed for 'omertá' and suspicion.

'The dead also scream' is an expedition through the mythical and invertebrate territory of Costa da Morte. An attempt to decipher a few years of lead in a disturbing landscape that conditions lives and souls: the sharp beaches; the deep vegetation of 'toxos', nettles and 'fieitas'; the 'borraxeira', that sea fog that eats the earth and turns it into a hell of humidity... "This is a novel of intrigue, of detectiveness, of mystery," says Lema. "There are drugs, love, death... Drug trafficking is a theme that supports the novel, because it defines the territory and always generates a lot of tension and attraction. But it is not the only issue. There is a psychological component that I wanted to be present yes or yes. The characters are amazing and at the same time have been very beaten. And where this intention is most noticeable is in the treatment of therapies and suicide. Respectful but crude, as in suicide, different short circuits operate but it is unknown where the blackout is, where it detonates why. And one day, suddenly, there is no light."

But there's more. This is also a novel of overcoming. Of revenge against the paw of the drug in the days of lead of the 80s and 90s in a fishing and rural Galicia, glittering and closed. " It is a detective novel in which there is a memory, a memory of overcoming. Of overcoming those years of social destruction in the villages, of that time when widows cried at night because their husbands had disappeared into the sea and mothers without children demonstrated in the streets during the day because their children had drowned in drugs. That, that pain, that past, mark; not only to families but to an entire territory. And it's the territory where years later I grew up."

But your generation was no longer as whipped as the previous ones.- Because we move away from what that world meant, especially if I refer to what is the runaway consumption that led to the death of entire groups of friends. But drug trafficking and its effects are still present. Look at the narco-submarine that has appeared in the Illa de Arousa, the glider stranded in Nemiña (Muxía) a week ago or the coca laboratory that they have dismantled in Cotobade (Pontevedra) a few days ago. And the best: the neighbor of Cotobade who told the press something like: "Look, I didn't know that there were those cousas, but it is true that they did not greet."

That almost discordant attitude with life, or so pure life, runs through the pages of 'The dead also scream'. The temperament that characterizes a place, that mixture of withdrawal, unforeseen humor, and behaviors are also key in the novel. Another landscape skinned in. Carla Traba, Santiago Insúa, Manuela Elisa, Castijo de Dios, Mangana... Here are some of the characters. Their crossed lives generate an addictive combustion. "There's also a little bit of love," Lema says. "Since in journalism writing about love is not well seen, then we are going to do it here. People spend their lives thinking about ways to fall in love and fall out of love, how to keep the flame alive, how to find fire, how to enjoy it, how to enjoy it... But from a dirty past no one comes out clean, neither in drugs nor in love."

David Lema is part of the Opinion team of this newspaper. For two seasons he displayed in the pages of 'Papel' a section of personal interviews with columnists (women and men) of different headers. One of the best series of conversations of recent years. Among its literary cardinal points are Chaves Nogales, Gay Talese, Andrea Camillieri, Indro Montanelli... "And if we talk about Galician 'noir', I would undoubtedly quote a Domingo Villar whose universe I discovered almost 'post mortem'". Now he incurs in the novel between two vertigos: "I write in a newspaper and our material is the news. From there we can move to certain margins. And now I've written fiction, but that doesn't suddenly make me a writer, nor does it mean that until now I was a newspaper writer. Of course, I loved being able to cross all the red lines -except the most common sense-. It is fascinating what opens up when you do not have a limitation, moreover; There is a moment when you discover that what can be opened is so deep that it almost gives panic, but that panic is pure adrenaline. It is fascinating to work with the materials of fiction. And to dispose each character to tell a truth, but what is the truth if from the truth you can also deceive."

And the relationship with the reader changes from the newspaper to the narrative. It is true that today, when you write in a newspaper, you notice a certain type of reader who leaves his comments at the foot of the news that we are in a time of very exacerbated political militancy and that there are many people wishing to jump into the Roman circus. But here, in fiction, perhaps because it is the first novel, I have achieved a total independence of the reader. I don't know who he is or what he thinks. And I don't want to know either. At least it was like that while I was writing. Now I want to meet you all!

According to The Trust Project criteria

Learn more

• Galicia
• Santiago de Compostela
• Corunna
• Civil Guard
• Pontevedra
• THE WORLD
• literature
• crime novel