There’s a wonderful line: “Your Lord, if loving is a crime, I am guilty in the first degree.” And the judge replies “Shut up, you’re here for drunk driving”. It came to mind during the first – and longest – part of Pablo Motos’ interview with Juan del Val. Juan del Val, proud and flirtatious, arrives on set and he and Motos embrace. Greet respectable people. They sit down. Motos, with a “look at the truth I’m about to tell” face, says – be careful – “We will talk about the writers who don’t sell and envy you. We will talk about the mediocre ones who have never had anything happen to them in their lives.” The moment he looks at the camera and says “what about the writers,” I took it for granted because of a recent article. Taking into account that Pablo Motos had a subordinate call him on a public holiday and kept me on the phone for two and a half hours (as I told him) because he didn’t like one of my articles, I’m not surprised. Pablo Motos is like Pirate Roberts: he takes no prisoners. He gets an employee killed with a merciless attack.
Juan del Val, who arrived in style, says he respects writers who sell little (that’s all that’s needed!). He had a different aura today, he looked crazy. The same one we’ve seen from Rosalía this week and from Oliver Laxe since he won the Jury Prize at Cannes. The honeys of success.
It begins a block of victimization that del Val has delved into in recent weeks: how badly he did in high school, how badly his parents did, his poor Republican grandfather (so we can see that he has “leftist” origins), and how unpleasant it was to work on a theater show. Then he talks about his psychiatric treatment (psychiatric, as Instagram activists say), even though he says it was psychoanalysis, and I don’t know if it was one thing, if it was another, or if it was alter. The specific theme of “being a bad boy” and being terrible at studies sounds – from the outside – as if it were the typical student who, not satisfied with not giving a damn, doesn’t let the teacher teach the class. Being bad in high school is not something to brag about; As you age you realize that the attitude of the bad guys is always pathetic. I insist, this can be seen from the outside. Maybe there was an educational issue I wasn’t aware of. He also says, by the way, that we made his people suffer, and that for a while he didn’t want to leave the house, as if passers-by shouted to him: “How much prose you spend, Juan!”.
Juan del Val, when asked about criticisms of the quality of his prose, says a ollie on the topic and states that “my success bothers me because I am critical of power”. Beautiful moment worthy of a Pedro Vera cartoon. He attributes these criticisms to “wars between editorial groups” and goes on to explain the difference between being an employee of Atresmedia or The anthill. Let’s finish! Which does not have a contract with Antena 3 as such! Having started there, Juan!
He says he has read everything that has been written about him, but that those criticisms come from people who have not read the novel because it was not published. His pride prevailed and he did not play the popular literature card. In fact, he says that the songs shared online did not come from his novels. But they were, and they specifically come from the examples the publisher has on their website. Another thing is that someone shared, in jest, that “The ten fingers and ten toes…”. Here del Val plays by misquoting (deliberately, I think) a criticism that appeared in this same medium, and Motos equates his collaborator’s situation with that of Umbral, Cela, Moix and Arrabal. Ditto, Paolo. The same.
Juan says that hatred sinks, that criticism destroys lives and that what is done to him is bullying. He went from being James Dean to Rebel without a cause be Simón Perez, without breaking a sweat. Juan congratulates him with questions about the sexual passages in the novel. Juan looks at the camera. He likes to be portrayed as a forest turd.
I was able to read the novel and Juan del Val did not deserve this award. But I recognize one thing, and that is the animation he has given us in recent weeks. And for this he deserves applause. And Pablo another, if he doesn’t get angry.
