Sex, heroin (sporadic) and squatting within the disaster of the 40s explored by Fidel Moreno | Culture | EUROtoday

There they lived I do not know what anarcho -syndicalist leaders, there was the primary Okupa home in Madrid [calle Amparo, 83]there abound infravoyance … In this park, the Casino Park, on these similar stairs, some vital scenes of its new novel go, Better than useless (Random House). Fidel Moreno (Huelva, 49 years outdated) walks by the Lavapiés neighborhood stating the hidden tales with the information of the one who has been touring virtually 30 years.

Julio, the protagonist of a unprecedented story in its normality, additionally lives within the neighborhood, with a view to the church of San Lorenzo, and enters dangerously within the forties. Try to conceive prole along with your accomplice, put in the true property hypothesis enterprise, however, when the pandemic confinement arrives, it establishes a sexual relationship recurrent with its neighbor Okupa.

The younger lady offers her peace and grip, and along with her she shares massive quantities of medicine: tens of millions of joints, some LSD microdosis and somewhat sneaky heroin, the good discovery within the lifetime of July. In addition to Cialis, a drug for the erection that the character tantea for journalistic functions. “Julio responds to our failed generation, in the sense that we wanted to make a second transition and what we found was a second disenchantment. Together with the accelerated and over -information times, an unsatisfied type of personality is generated and that permanent dissatisfaction is what guides the character, ”says the creator.

Better than useless It is an clever novel, stuffed with distant humor, that mixes the macrohistory of Spain with life to the idle of its protagonist, a person who tries to navigate in a collapsed world in occasions of masculinity with out references. It is allowed to movement, it’s amoral, have a look at issues from a misty remoteness: he’s an observer of his personal life. But, inside that independence of every part, or maybe for it, it has an explorer spirit.

Moreno is director of the antiprohibitionist journal Hempdevoted to the examine and protected consumption of unlawful substances. He has studied standard music within the essay What are you singing to me? (Debate, 2018), the place it analyzes the historical past of Spain by the songs: from the Face to the solar a Ay Carmelaof The dairy cow a The woman Yeyé. With his musical challenge the skinny man has taken three albums, though he has not hung them in Spotify. “I don’t know, it’s a rare neglect, perhaps a defense mechanism before an self of the past. But I’ve never stopped writing, ”he says. In reality, the poems will quickly publish The incorrect man on the proper time (Pretext).

Better than useless Talk about many issues. So Moreno, a skinny, tall, blue -eyed man (right this moment reddened by allergy), solutions in elements and with a mild Andalusian accent.

Masculinity

“I was interested in telling the story of a man in married crisis with an empowered woman. These new relationships, which no longer respond to the traditional distribution of roles, are being counted mainly by women. That is why it seemed interesting to write it from the point of view of a man. Because today we are very clear what it means to be a woman, but we don’t know what it means to be a man. This indefinition is very rich, gives a lot of narrative game. New masculinities? I have no nostalgia for lost power, but neither does the soft contemporary virility convince me. Regarding identity, I think you have to try to be as little as possible: as possible man as possible, as Spanish as possible, etc. ”

Middle age disaster

“Julio is in the crisis of the 40, which in our generation corresponds, rather, with the end of adolescence. We have children late, job and sentimental precariousness prevents us from sitting head. Upon arriving at 40 one, he cannot continue to stretch the gum, and the character faces the decision to integrate or not: have children and a serious job. Find a accommodation in living in contradance of what is commanded, as the philosopher Agustín García Calvo said [Moreno fue habitual de sus célebres tertulias en el Ateneo de Madrid y el pensador ácrata está muy presente en el libro]”.

Occupation

“I’ve been wanting to be an anarchist for 30 years and I don’t get it for the lack of a political project that excites me. And with age I have gone from a militant vision to a contemplative. In that sense, I have tried to portray reality in all its confusion. As for housing, speculation and squatting I use an equanimous vision, showing the contradictions of what has been the Okupa movement. There is nowhere to flee: it is difficult to find initiatives that are not crossed by individual interest. I tell him without judging, because I believe in the reader’s maturity. And I don’t write for the darker. ”

Speculation

“The problem of housing in Spain has no solution because we have inoculated the speculation virus. From an electoral point of view, solutions do not agree. The house would not have to be a speculative good, the ground of the cities should be declared public and no one should be evicted from their home. But in Spain there is no housing policy or I think there will be: people want a second residence as insurance, as a pension that completes retirement.

Heroin

“Heroin embodies in the collective imaginary the myth of perdition, and its story always follows the same scheme: from the sky of pleasure to the hell of addiction. But heroin consumption does not necessarily lead to dependency, and there are those who use it sporadically, in moderation and without major problems. Drugs are not good or bad, it depends on the use they are given. Accustomed to the myth of perdition, I understand that surprise when a sporadic use of heroin appears in the novel, snorted in small doses and spacing the shots so as not to generate dependence. Illegal drugs are usually treated with many prejudices and focus on the minority percentage of people who suffer from misuse disorders. If, as a society, we want to have a healthy relationship with drugs, far from abuse and loss, we must end your prohibition and regulate your access in sanitary conditions. And not forget that for good use it is necessary to have good information, without myths or lies. ”

Popular music

“My interest is popular music, the most listened to songs of each era. A society is explained by its relationship with popular songs, in a way that no other historical document allows. Spain has a problem with national symbols and also with music in Spanish, and that has made us lose decades. The nineties, for example, are characterized by turning their backs on the popular song, now there is a certain idyll. But we run the risk of forgetting how important refinement is: sometimes the unusual is lost and they crush us with the obvious. ”

Lavapiés

“You have to run away from superficial picturesqueism, many tensions are lived here. Lavapiés is a laboratory where Spain of the future is rehearsed. There are people from everywhere, there are few children, many dogs, speculation, squatters, conflicts that are more or less resolved, individualism, but occasionally a certain association, resistance to gentrification. And an effort on the part of those who have children to make this neighborhood an experience of town within the city. ”