Nona Fernández: "In a democracy, those who are anti-democratic cannot have a voice."

For writer Nona Fernández (Santiago, Chile, 1971), Barcelona is not an unfamiliar city. Not only because she has visited it countless times, but also because she lived there. “It feels very familiar,” she says with a laugh. However, this year's visit is no coincidence. Last Monday, she opened the fourth edition of the KM Amèrica festival with a choir of live readings alongside other Latin American writers. “It's a way for us to confront the Spanish public and engage in dialogue among authors. To think together, to see what we're doing and how we think about the world,” she reflects.

This isn't the only challenge that brought her back to Spain. The Chilean author is preparing to publish her book, "Marciano," a work that—she exclusively told La Vanguardia —will premiere next October in Spain and Chile. The debut date wasn't the only thing kept secret; the story of her new novel was also a mystery. The novel was based on conversations the writer had with Mauricio Hernández Norambuena—known as Commander Ramiro—one of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front riflemen who organized the assassination attempt on Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1986.

She's passionate about writing about Chilean history, evident in the way she speaks with ease about a topic to which she has dedicated a significant portion of her work. Her latest work, "How to Remember Thirst?", emerged in the context of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the coup d'état in Chile. An essay that reflects on the ruins of time and history following the bombing of La Moneda Palace in 1973.

You've said that history takes the form of a bombardment, an aimless explosion through time. How can history be constructed if it has no concrete form?

Well, that's the challenge. History is very difficult to wrap up or organize. We must distrust the story we've been told and always have to revisit it. From historical events, I've realized that temporal linearity is a fiction we've created to understand ourselves. If not, it would be madness. Chile has its own bombardment, but every country and nation—and we're seeing it now around the world—returns to that nightmare. I have the fantasy that we haven't fully understood what that means.

There is no single way to tell the story then.

I believe history is constructed from many stories. It's a number of sedimented layers of time and versions, and I think we always have to be stirring those layers. There are clues we haven't seen that would help us better understand our present and better observe that future bombardment. Because there will be a future if we don't fully understand it.

I don't know if literature is enough, if language is enough, if there are words that can serve as healing or hope in Gaza.

How much of the memory of the military coup was buried under the rubble of La Moneda?

The book deals with the bombing of La Moneda as a mirror of other bombings. Chilean history has been constructed as all histories are constructed, with versions usually constructed by the victors. And in that version, millions of things are left out, millions of pieces of rubble are left out. There are so many dictatorial codes that we still operate within and don't want to accept! I think we don't yet think about the wounds that remain, about the lack of reparation, the lack of justice, about the bodies of people whose whereabouts we'll never know.

You mentioned the current bombings, such as what's happening today in the Gaza Strip. What can literature contribute to the memory of this conflict?

I'm struggling to think of anything useful for Gaza right now. I don't know if literature is enough, if language is enough, if there are words that can serve as healing or hope. I honestly think we've run out of words in the face of what's happening.

Two years ago, the 50th anniversary of the military coup in Chile was commemorated, and although efforts have been made, there seems to be no shared discourse about what the dictatorship meant. Why?

I'd like to have clear answers, but I believe we had a democratic transition that wasn't strong enough to protect democracy. In a democracy, those who are anti-democratic can't have a voice. It's almost ridiculous to tolerate those who don't tolerate you or to tolerate those who cause harm. Because too much was allowed, those seeds planted during the dictatorship have grown into fierce trees today.

That discourse has reappeared, among presidential candidates for example.

I think that in the Chilean case, we're experiencing the revenge of the social uprising, which was also very extreme. They felt unprotected, and what they're doing now is crushing all the discourses that began to take hold in society: feminism, ecology, indigenous peoples, the so-called dissident movements. What they're doing is putting the chicken coop in order again, and for that, what better discourse than the Pinochetist one. Furthermore, the media, with all due respect, portrays these discourses in a very irresponsible manner. We must protect democracy, however weak it may be, and maintain ethical boundaries. I believe the media are not having democratic ethical boundaries.

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Chile will hold a presidential election in December that will determine whether the global trend toward the far right continues.

It's a tremendous symbolic gesture. If we truly end up with a Pinochet-style president, or a female president, who once again raises those rhetoric, I think something tremendous will happen because there will be reactions. And everything will blow up in our faces. For example, everything that's happening in Argentina. If Milei wins in the next elections, the damage that has been done will be irreparable for many decades. The citizens will pay for that. I don't want that to happen to us. We've made great progress, and we must protect it.

In the second half of the year, you will publish your novel Marciano . Will this work take us to new literary planets?

It's going to take us to a Martian place (laughs), to a strange place, also to a planet, I would say, quite unknown, whose logic is difficult to fully understand. It's based on a series of conversations I had and have had in the Rancagua high-security prison with Mauricio Hernández Norambuena, Commander Ramiro of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, one of the riflemen who tried to kill Pinochet. When he was a boy, they called him a Martian, and he's a very special being. It involves understanding a guerrilla in the contemporary world, and it involves understanding someone who has been in a very extreme prison for 23 years. He's a very Martian being. Very outside the logic of the contemporary world.

What were you able to discover in those conversations?

His memory builds very little recollection, because the present is stagnant, the same every day, and the past is very much alive. It's an attempt to understand that psyche, to understand that memory, and to also complete part of the history of the Chilean armed struggle. That's the planet we're heading to.