Fina Casalderrey: “‘A muller Xabaril’ is inspired by a real character, but everything is fiction”

“The only thing that is real or a book is the inspiration of a character I know as a major, Adeline Franco, from Santa María de Xeva. It was known as La Jabalina in Pontevedra, and O Jabalí in Xeve. It is inspired by a real character, but everything is fiction, except for some anecdotes, some details that happened”. With these words, Fina Casalderrey (Pontevedra, 1951) talks about the xerme of her latest novel, Muller Xabarilwhich the author herself, accompanied by Víctor F. Freixanes, president of the Royal Galician Academy, and Fran Alonso, director of Ediciones Xerais, will present this xoves (19:00) in the Castelao Museo de Pontevedra building.

— How did you catch that person?

— Since then, honey, in the village I was drawn to a muller who knew how to speak Spanish well, who spent time when most people in their idad did not know, or rather, read, but a little more than I knew about it. And that she slept with us covered, that she was a vagabond, that she didn’t wash herself, that she dressed in sacks and dark clothes, that she walked with big hanging treasures… Or that she didn’t know when she was a girl and that she was in those sacks carried the books of the law. I know that a little later, when he is twenty years old, they want to investigate this muller. The concept they painted in Pontevedra was the dunha muller who scared children, used blackmail to get them to eat or behave well because the muller was buried in a sack or a coconut. Porén, in Xeve they have a different respect.

— Who was Adelina Franco?

— What he knew about her was only as the mayor of Muller, no one knew why a person with economic potential, who had capital, who did not have erhómos sequera because he shared it… In fact, he lived on what he was paid for land tenancy. At home I still stand in Xeve. But it was not known the reason why it was like that, only someone remembered or what was said there. Not from my memory, but because I was told that she was a very beautiful girl, tall and thin, who sang well, who was more educated than most, not in her environment, in her time… Or the rest will become legendary .

— What was said about her?

“It was all ruxe ruxe. They say that he forced himself to do this when he died on the nai, they say that he hated men, they say that he was more generous to his neighbors. Every Xeve knows the expression, because that’s how we are, and let’s stay with the morbid part, which she used to say: «A comareiro sen Pine trees é coma unha paxara sen pelos». This, ao mellor, scandalized the xente máis nova. It was a way of talking that disappeared when Xa was not well. I didn’t check to see if he was up to no good or simply rebelled against the world. Iso no or I know. There are even those who said that I killed or died, but it is not known what happened. There are slightly special signs in all places.

— When I started Muller Xabaril?

— I started twenty years ago wanting to make some kind of biography and logo deixeino to stay. I noticed that what was known was not abundant. I was fascinated by that muller. He colored lei books in two sacks that he carried when he walked around the world, he didn’t sleep at home, even though he had a house, and he traveled all over Spain by train. I didn’t get in anywhere, the conductor was kicked out because he didn’t have a ticket, but our train came back and that’s how the world passed. It was known that he walked with a dog called O Luis. Or his father has a farm of pigs that looked like brave pigs, xabarís, and maybe he came from there or alcuma, but others say it’s because of his height… They decided to continue the project in another way. Release me from the bond of an impossible biography, because one could only talk about his older phase and write a novel. She fictionalized her past and answered why she went to the extreme of living in the wrong way, poor, thrown on the roads, as if poured with resin, which she did not ask to look for. The novel is set from the first half of the 20th century until or in the early 1970s, when I died. I would like the reader to get up like I got up in mine, like someone who goes through a river with rapids that hit you, but also pools, with scary but also peaceful moments that make you smile. Learning to do meu pai that defuses humor or drama.

“I never found myself on children’s literature”

Pontevedra appears in the novel as Ponteburgo do Río, and Xeve also has a fictitious name: “Only we who are from Pontevedra and we from Xeva know two places Muller Xabaril», said Fina Casalderrey. At the same time, I warned that all the people I interviewed, who had a close relationship with Adelina Franco, “mutilate, or even call out people who, indeed, had a relationship. He only makes some jokes because I know he didn’t care”.

— Is it a novel that has no shaving for its readers?

“Certainly not. Some things are fixed for adults, but, really, a long novel, no. Fixed, it’s true, but they’re in the drawers. I have some that I’ve never published. When I write for children and young people, I also document myself, at least and for little people. I eat a puzzle of more pieces He is, of course, more complex aspects of the frame, but he is puzzle equal. I, like María Victoria Moreno, have never had anything to do with children’s literature.

— The impression remains that the novel is fake, among other things it leads to misunderstanding.

-Clean. It’s a drama. Or the drama of a person who was perhaps ahead of his time or who was more liberal, and it is also possible that he experienced some disappointment. We all go by our feelings and something has to happen, maybe with your father, maybe with the young man I have… to get to that final state, and not fool around with dolls in two shop windows. The novel begins with a character who appears as the narrator or narrator, although narrated in the third person, reveals or conceals muller Xabaril and this shocking shock leads to paralysis.

—Which point is important in the novel or role in the music?

—Music is the most important and has a lot to do with my music from childhood and youth. My nai sewed shirts for the factory and sang songs. The lyrics were for her Spanish school, because she is moito non fora at school. You knew by heart even those couplets foron o último that se lle esquesau xa de maior. Morreu hai hoxe [por onte] one year. At the last moment, she didn’t know the words, but if you heard her, you sang those couplets she sang as a little girl… The music appears in the book when another character instead of eating.