Montserrat Roig: "Feminists are not those who just want power and for everything to stay the same."

The writer Montserrat Roig has just returned from the aid flotilla to Gaza, in which, led by Greta Thunberg, activists and intellectuals from around the world have tried—in vain—to deliver food and humanitarian supplies to the Palestinian population. The author displays surprising vitality, given that, at 79 years old, she recently participated aboard the Open Arms in a rescue of immigrants in the Mediterranean. The author, who chronicled and gave voice to the Catalans in the Nazi concentration camps, and who immersed herself in the Irish conflict during its most violent years, does not hesitate to describe what is happening in that part of the Middle East as "genocide." She welcomes this newspaper during a break from her Stakhanovite workdays, in her apartment on Bailén Street, with a veranda filled with plants, a grandfather clock, a rocking chair, wicker armchairs... and a cat wandering around every corner.

“Pla deserved the Nobel Prize, of course, but I would have given it to Mercè Rodoreda first.”

What mood did you come back in?

My spirit isn't important. The lives of children and all Gazans are. We want to break the siege, alleviate the famine. We haven't succeeded, but we will try again and again. It's horrible, I can't understand it. Men kill each other, annihilate each other, destroy each other, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in so many places... Children become accustomed to terror from the womb; homes, hospitals, and schools are ruins. It's pornographic. They certainly can't call me anti-Semitic, because I denounced this cancer in Els catalans als camps nazis. I know very well what Neus Català, Joan Pagès, Ferran Planes, Joaquim Amat-Piniella suffered... Today they would shudder to see the images of malnourished Palestinian children.

Let's talk about literature. Some were surprised that I wrote the prologue to "Finding all possible illusions ," the book of previously unpublished texts by Josep Pla.

We're so different, aren't we? I might be irritated, for example, by the homage he dedicated to Andreu Nin, but it's absurd to analyze Pla's work based on whether or not it conforms to an ideal of Sartrean commitment. He defined himself as a liberal conservative, and if we want to understand our country, we have no choice but to turn to him. He's an anti-romantic writer, who shuns the mystical and the magical, and sniffs out reality and society, the extinction of a bourgeois model of society, like no one else. He's a contemplative, and a cynic if you will, but a genius.

He wasn't very nice to you...

In an interview I did with him, he exclaimed: "With these lives, not what I wrote!" Luckily, I didn't listen to him because, now with varicose veins... but he wrote me a conciliatory letter, and I've always respected and admired him. I love the play that's been made of our interview, even though the critic from your newspaper exaggerated a bit when he said that "the Pla/Roig we saw at the Teatre Lliure is the Nixon/Frost of Catalan culture."

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Did Pla deserve the Nobel Prize?

Of course! But I would have given it to Mercè Rodoreda first. Salvador Espriu was also a great candidate. And, among the current nominees, Antònia Vicens, Jaume Cabré, Maria Barbal, Miquel de Palol... does anyone dare say that any of them are inferior to Han Kang or Jon Fosse, for example? The Swedish Academy has made an effort in recent years to seek out peripheral cultures, but it has overlooked some.

It's said that Catalan literature is dominated by the cult of youth. What do you think?

Well, this country has a ridiculous tendency to produce geniuses under 30. There's no such thing as young or old: there are people who write well and people who write badly. Carles Riba or JV Foix aren't old or classics; they're authors who teach us.

Recently, in one of her columns, she argued with a group of PP feminists...

I can't conceive of a feminism that isn't left-wing, that renounces solidarity. I have a hard time seeing as feminists those women who simply seek access to positions of power to keep things as they are. Thatcher, a feminist? Ayuso? Please... Tomorrow we'll talk about this on the podcast I do with Maruja Torres.

You also denounce the supposed feminism of some left-wing men.

I come from another planet: a world where adultery by a wife was a crime and we couldn't open a checking account without her husband's permission. In that context, some generous progressives boasted of authorizing their wives to have bank accounts "so she could buy whatever she wanted," or businessmen of the left-wing divine class exercised the right of pernada with their employees. Even today, men aren't accustomed to living with free women.

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Have you had any problems with your latest novel?

At a Ripoll high school, complaints from some parents led to the removal of Mounia's Smile from the reading list due to certain explicit scenes between young people. But what really bothered them was the immigrant children's origins and their relationships with the locals. This novel reflects the epic story of several generations of humble people, simultaneously in Morocco and Catalonia. And some are irritated by this play of mirrors because they prefer us to speak of them as hostile aliens, not as brothers. I don't mind because reading should never be compulsory, and thanks to that, my book has sold out in Ripoll. It already happened to me years ago at another high school in Manresa with The Time of the Cireres, because of the orgy scene.

Are young people overprotected?

They are overprotected, and adolescence extends into their 30s. But parents know that their children have a very difficult time earning a living and becoming independent. As I used to tell my children: if you read, at least the unemployment line will get shorter.

How are you dealing with getting older?

The other day I had dinner with some actress friends my age—I won't name names—who smile and even flirt during the day, and at night bitterly lament their wrinkled skin, their sagging stomach, their sagging breasts, their cellulite-ridden buttocks... Thousands of women still believe, deep down, that they are nothing without their beauty. Susan Sontag once spoke of the unease a woman feels each time she confesses her age. We women should stand in the world on our own two feet and, like men, counteract physical aging with intelligence and sensitivity.