Fernando Benzo, writer: “In general, we remember very little about corruption cases”

The history of the last four decades in Spain is followed by crime, also cases of corruption, state sewage… All this is combined in Hunted (Planet)novel by Fernando Benzo (Madrid, 1965) winner of the Azorín award. An author who does not forget his stage of life in A Coruña. “I went from childhood and youth, until I went to study in Madrid. I have wonderful memories of A Coruña because those are very important years in a person’s life and I enjoyed them with great intensity,” he says.

—Crime from the 70s, but it also talks about corruption, state sewage, love, unbreakable friendships… what were you “chasing” in “The Persecuted”?

— I tried to combine two elements. I actually wanted to write a crime and adventure, very ambitious because it covers four decades of criminal careers of a number of characters, and at the same time a plot of corruption in the present, with which there were many elements to unite there. But, at the same time, he wanted it to be more than just a thriller and an adventure novel. What I wanted was to build the characters in all their dimensions, not only in their criminal dimension, but also to tell about the friendship that is established between the members of the criminal group, the betrayals and disappointments that happen between them, their family relationships, love relationships… A criminal is not a criminal from the time he gets up until he goes to bed, he is not a criminal 24 hours a day, but he commits his crimes and, furthermore, he has a life that I was interested to say, a personal and emotional life that was as attractive to me as his criminal life. All this gathering is what I put into the novel. I chased after many things (laughs).

— That’s why he writes at the end of the book: “I suffered a lot and enjoyed writing this novel. Where was that suffering?

— Suffering is precisely in putting together all those pieces you have in your head. They had to fit together logically – which I was very worried about – and I suffered a lot later on getting the story set up properly. You are telling a crime story, but also a portrait of an entire era. What happened in this country in the world of crime in the 70s is not the same as what happened in the 80s, 90s or later. A long year of research passed before I started writing the first words of the novel. It is part of the suffering, but also part of the enjoyment. This is chosen voluntarily, it is a strange suffering.

— He assures in the book that it is a work of fiction with hints at recognizable characters and events taken from the newspaper library. So there is a lot of reality.

—What exists is a lot of reality embedded in fiction. In the documentation for the novel, I started to find stories, with events that were exciting, that I really wanted to include. With whom I began to introduce what actually happened into the biography of my characters. I also introduced certain nods to real characters, without any character in the novel being an exact match to the real one. It is also a certain complicity that I am trying to establish in the reader. Not only do I want you to have a good time reading the novel, but at some point I want you to doubt; ask yourself whether what you read in the novel could or could not have happened in reality. I try not to distinguish too much between what is real and what is not. The only clue I give is that the strangest, most memorable stories that happen to these characters are taken from reality. That reality is stranger than fiction, I was convinced when I documented myself for this novel.

— One of the characters says at the beginning: “People like to mix shit, they like to hear about the state sewer.” Was it clear that this sewer had to be there?

— Maybe it’s not one of the main elements of the novel, but it has to be. As I talk throughout the novel about what I call “criminal marketing”, this feeling that some crimes suddenly succeed in the media and others, on the other hand, don’t; and it is not easy to know why. It is also true that when the state sewage system is mentioned, it immediately sounds like something very mysterious and that normal citizens cannot access it.

— You held various positions in the administration, did you sometimes have to stop thinking about what they were going to say to you?

– No, that’s not important to me. When you write, you have to be brave, and if you decide to write, you cannot stop because then what you write will not work. What I am talking about in this novel has neither biographical nor autobiographical components, otherwise it would be a character that would have to be closed (laughs). Personal experiences that I may have had serve as a skeleton and an element of the setting. Here I am playing with the world of high politics in its darkest aspect and so when I create scenes like those of politicians and journalists, I have enough experience that some keys work, but it has nothing to do with real events, it is pure stuff. landscape.

— No one called you on the first days of publication?

— I am lucky that the people I worked with are very different from the criminals I portray in this novel. Never mind, so no one took it for granted; on the contrary, for now they tell me that they had a lot of fun reading it.

— From Luis Cáceres, the Minister of the Interior who is involved in a corruption case in the novel, he writes. “He has charisma and closeness to the one who puts the voters and the media in his pocket and above all what is very necessary in which the voters and the media are put in his pocket and above all what is very necessary. in the political mire, and it is ambition without limits and strife, which leads him to foresee a future that will fly high”. Are there many Luis Cáceres in real life?

—Everyone who reads this description should think who comes to mind. I will not fail the game of fiction and reality that I propose to the reader. I’m just challenging you to see who comes to mind with some of the characters. That’s part of the appeal of the novel. It’s a little hint that I give to the reader, that he has to do his part.

—Alludes to cases of corruption in today’s society. Are they forgiven, are they forgotten too quickly?

“Tomorrow’s news covers today’s.” And it happens all the time. Stories come to mind that were extremely scandalous and for which it would be logical to be in the foreground even today, but there is always some new news that makes us forget the previous one. In the novel Daniela, the protagonist, writes her first article in which she exposes the plot, becomes a “trending topic”, opens social gatherings, news… and 48 hours later she collapses, she is no longer talked about at social gatherings… This is satire , but it really happens that way. We have a very short memory, in general, people with corruption cases.

— He confirmed that it is 40 years of portraying society through crime. Changed a lot?

—In their criminal career, the characters range from neighborhood robbers, knife robbers in the 70s; take advantage of the great advent of drug trafficking and consumption in the 80s; connect and connect with large international criminal networks from the years of prosperity that came in the 90s until reaching into those spheres of power and political and police corruption. In a simple way, it is not only a portrait of the characters, but also of our country. Not only crime has changed, but so has our country. This novel begins in the district of Madrid, San Blas, which at the end of the 70s was a district of maximum marginality, where these characters grow up. When I was documented for the novel, I was going to breathe it in and acclimatize, but luckily, that didn’t happen. San Blas is now a fantastic residential neighborhood to live in.

— You won the Azorín award with this novel, what prompted you to introduce yourself?

“I was encouraged by a very sentimental reason. When I started writing, there was a huge network of literary awards, but now, unfortunately, there is none. For those of us who started writing, it was a way to publicize what we were doing, and there were great rewards. For me, one of those big prizes was the Azorín Prize and, with tremendous ingenuity, I submitted one of the first stories I wrote and, of course, I didn’t win it. But I’ve always been hooked on that prize. I’ve seen it decline year after year, it’s an award that has a great resonance, but it also has a very literary component, it retains a literary flair, which the other awards may have lost. With which thirty-odd years after I introduced myself, and when I had already left many years’ worth of literary awards, with persecuted I had a feeling it was a solid enough novel to try my luck again. In a way, I paid off my debt.

— How do you balance writing with a position in administration?

— Well, take the hours to do what you want. I think that when you want something, in one way or another, you eventually achieve it. I have very long days because I sleep very few hours, so I can find what little time is devoted to literature and the rest of my usual professional day. As far as literature is concerned, I try to practically fulfill the fundamental maxim, which is to write every day, at least write a little. If you write every day, eventually you’ll have the novel or story you’ve been meaning to write. You have to be very disciplined, it’s a matter of discipline. The romanticism in this writing is not quite real, you have to work a lot in a very disciplined way.

— Was there an event that triggered the novel?

—The first thing I remember about this novel is that I was with a friend who I was talking to about what I was writing and I said to him: “I’m thinking of writing a novel about a gang of pimps”, and he replied: “That’s a weirder thing than you we ever said, I don’t think there’s a future. That’s the only thing I remember, but I don’t know why I decided to write a wicked story.

“Have you started thinking about the next one yet?”

— To write a novel, you have to completely free yourself from the previous one, and I still haven’t freed myself from it. persecuted. I have a possibility that the next one has something to do with this, but who knows?