There is a wonderful joke: “Your Lord, if loving is a crime, I am guilty in the first degree.” And the judge responds “Shut up, you are here for drunk driving.” It came to mind during the first – and longest – part of Pablo Motos’ interview with Juan del Val. , proud and flirtatious, arrives on the set and he and Motos hug each other. Greet the respectable. They sit down. Motos, with a face like “look at the truth I’m going to say,” says – attention – “We’ll talk about the writers who don’t sell and are envious of you. We’ll talk about the mediocre ones to whom nothing has ever happened in their lives.” The moment he looks at the camera and says “and the writers” I have taken it for granted. Taking into account that Pablo Motos had a subordinate call me on a holiday and keep me on the phone for two and a half hours (as I tell him) because he didn’t like an article of mine, I’m not surprised. Pablo Motos is like Pirate Roberts: he takes no prisoners. He makes an employee kill with a merciless turra.
Juan del Val, who has arrived on a high note, says that he respects writers who don’t sell much (that’s all it takes!). He had a different aura today, of being crazy. The same as already. The honeys of success.
A block of victimization begins that del Val has delved into in recent weeks: how bad he had it in high school, how bad his parents had it, his poor Republican grandfather (so we can see that he has a “leftist” origin), and how unpleasant it was to work on a play. Then he talks about his psychiatric treatment (psychiatrized, as the Instagram activists say), although he says it was psychoanalysis, and I don’t know if it was one thing, if it was the other, or if it was alters. The specific topic of “being a bad guy” and being bad at studies sounds – from the outside – like he has been the typical student who, not satisfied with not giving a damn, does not let the teacher teach the class. Being bad in high school is not something to brag about; With age you realize that the attitude of bad guys is always pathetic. I insist, this is seen from the outside. Perhaps there was an educational problem that I am unaware of. He also says, by the way, that we have made his people suffer, and that for a while he did not want to leave the house, as if the passers-by were going to shout at him “What a load of prose you spend, Juan!”
Juan del Val, when asked, makes a ollie on the subject and states that “my success bothers because I am critical of power.” Beautiful moment worthy of a Pedro Vera cartoon. He attributes these criticisms to “wars of publishing groups” and goes on to explain the difference between being an employee of Atresmedia or of The anthill. Let’s finish! That it does not have a contract with Antena 3 as such! Having started there, Juan!
He says that he has read everything that has been written about him, but that those criticisms are from people who have not read the novel because it had not been released. His pride has prevailed and he has not played the popular literature card. He says, in fact, that the passages that have been shared on the networks were not from his novels. But they were, and they have come specifically from the samples that the publisher has on its website. Another thing is that someone has shared, as a joke, that “The ten fingers of the hand and the ten of the toes…”. Here del Val plays at misquoting (deliberately, I think) a criticism, and Motos equates his collaborator’s situation to that of Umbral, Cela, Moix, and Arrabal. Same, Paul. The same.
Juan says that hate sinks, that criticism destroys lives, and that what is being done to him is bullying. He has gone from being James Dean to Rebel without a cause without breaking a sweat. Juan congratulates him with questions about the sex passages in the novel. Juan looks at the camera. He likes to be portrayed as a forest fucker.
I have been able to read the novel and Juan del Val did not deserve this award. But I recognize one thing, and that is the animation that he has given us these weeks. And for that he deserves applause. And Pablo another one, if he doesn’t get angry.
