Rosa Regs: “In Barcelona I don't feel helped or privileged” | EUROtoday

Somewhere within the Empord, after touring a mud highway for a kilometer, you attain the mass of Rosa Regs, your specific refuge with a taste of Italian Tuscany or French Provence. When I purchased it within the mid-70s it was only a hut in the course of a dry land, with a cow barn, a kitchen and a room. Today is a bit Eden hidden within the countryside, a Mediterranean villa painted in ocher and lined in ivy with a spectacular backyard: the bench below the weeping willow, the place each Christmas the household photograph is taken; the pool the place till lately Regs nonetheless bathed, even in winter (there’s a photograph of him within the water on a snowy day); the picket cabin remodeled right into a cinema with 5 sofas…

At 90 years previous, in considerably fragile well being and much more so since she broke her femur in October, Rosa Regés goes out to the backyard to obtain a bunch of journalists. She wears a straw hat with an olive department and smiles as her son Lauris pushes the wheelchair. Just revealed A legacy. The journey of life (Navona, in Spanish and Catalan) with the journalist Ldia Peneloa form of various biography through which she evaluations her work and profession, her political pondering and anecdotes with Duchamp – with whom she performed chess in Cadaqués – or Dal – who wished to color it like San Sebastian however she refused -…This city is Regs' life's workthe place he has written a big a part of his books -upstairs, within the research overlooking the countryside- and which has been the setting for the household, the assembly place for his 5 kids, grandchildren, pals… The Regés clan.

I’ve lived absolutely, sure, she says on the porch. And he provides: Sometimes I say to myself: 'It appears unbelievable that at your age you haven't modified your dangerous temper.' Although Regés has been residing on the margins of public life for a very long time, she has been – and is – one of many nice intellectuals of our nation, first as an editor in the course of the loss of life throes of Franco's regime, then as a author (she has gained an important prizes of the Spanish letters: Nadal with Azulin 1994, and the Planet with Dorotea's music, in 2001). However, he has not been a determine claimed by the institution cataln.

-Have you felt little valued in Catalua?

-I’ve been valued in every single place. But in Catalonia and in all nationalist cities, invaluable individuals are valued little or no. Josep Pla died with no medal!

-In the e book it says: Barcelona doesn't love me. On the opposite hand, Madrid highlights how properly acquired she has at all times felt.

-Barcelona has not beloved me very a lot… I write and write in Spanish. I used to be born in Barcelona and 5 minutes later they took me to France [tena 4 aos, en plena Guerra Civil], I returned to Spain they usually admitted me to a nuns' college. Oh, they taught me Spanish, happily fairly properly. What is my fault if politicians combat like loopy? Actually, expensive, I'm sorry. What I don't really feel like is helped or privileged.

-Years in the past they proposed that you simply go on the PSC lists. Have you had many disappointments with politics?

-All.

-In the e book he doesn't hold many issues quiet…

-Ah, now… How which of them?

-The combat with Esther Tusquets o Jorge Herralde, for instance… She talks a few brutal betrayal, a disaster that made her depart Barcelona.

-In life there are folks you want and folks you don't. I’ve by no means preferred Tusquets and Herralde. I’ve accepted what they did and I’ve endured it. Life has come to point out me that I used to be not fallacious.

It refers to a debt of 32 million pesetas that its writer The Gay Science contracted because of the extreme orders – returned later – from the distributor Enlace, through which Herralde and Tusquets had been concerned (with which he additionally had a dispute over copyrights of Matute Fields and that Regs gained).

Another of the correct names that he mentions is that of the previous socialist minister Cesar Antonio Molinawith which she coincided as director of the National Library. I fought with him and resigned, bear in mind. It was not due to the theft of some maps that occurred then however due to the take care of the minister, of whom he reproduced an disagreeable shouting dialog. In the center of that dialog, Regs acquired a name from this similar farm: a donkey had been born and the veterinarian wanted a reputation to register it. She merely answered: Caesar.

Rosa Regs has not misplaced that irony, that energy that led her to protest every little thing. When she was 22 years previous, preventing for freedom was brutal. Everything was in opposition to you. She invitations journalists to the Library, a secluded home that she reaches by crossing the backyard. The French Literature part is the most important. It is adopted by the English and the Greek Classics. Some cabinets devoted to Iran / Iraq, Israel / Palestine are stunning… And in a nook a photograph of the admired Josep Pla, who lived on this similar city. It is pure that the majority my journeys start on this space that has areas of landscapes so lovely and from the standpoint of my existence so inseparable from my spirit. Pla wrote it. And it additionally goes for Regs.