– Has more ignorance or culture been found?
– With me people have always been sensitive because they know that I do not live from this. If I do so, it is because Mariluz Escribano taught me that a city must be defended from misery in all areas. And a misery that must be defended is ethical misery and lack of commitment. I have met many people without sensitivity, but I am lucky that I meet others with whom I feel very compensated. And it is not an ideological question, Rocío Díaz in the Alhambra or Fátima Gómez Abad in the Provincial Council. Another curious thing, they are always women with whom it is, at least in my case, very easy to talk.
– Has Lorca also been a limit for other figures or has he mortgaged investments?
– The problem is to what extent that figure has become something that we sometimes throw each other in the face. The Lorca Center should have been considered as the great cultural epicenter of Granada, open to the city and to the commitment to culture in general. I don’t know if it is always full of activity. Granada has to stop feeling guilty for the brutal murder of Federico García Lorca and begin to vindicate a Lorca who is the town’s poet.
– To what extent has its idiosyncrasy weighed on the evolution of Granada?
– We have been lamenting for decades. It is the turning point to see that we have hit rock bottom. Malaga is not to blame for having 17 museums or for having gotten cruise ships to go. What have we done to avoid having 17 museums? I don’t want to be Ganivetian. Lorca had a marvelous imagination to build exciting projects from scratch, such as the Cante Jondo contest or the Barraca. When are things like that going to start happening to us?
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– Does poetic justice play?
– Until now we have lived a lot that passive Grenadianism, which was Ganivet’s of letting things go, that of Lorca’s for sailing ships. Seville has a path, only sighs row through the rivers of Granada. We have to forget that. People have come to believe it.
–Sometimes, it seems that she lives comfortably in lament.
–We have to start creating discomfort, because that is creating citizen awareness. Lorca created discomfort. Mariluz Escribano did it on the pages of IDEAL. We are going to turn Granada into a cultural city and politicians will have the obligation to get involved. We must build the identity of the city so that, when the new normal returns, we will not have wasted this time. In Malaga there is a project called ‘Malaga city of culture’ for which some have called us. I’m from Granada and I’m not going to fix the neighbor’s yard. I remember that Mariluz and I, like her Sancho Panza, created the magazine ‘Entrerríos’. In Malaga, the general director of Culture asked me to do it there. On the way back I told Mariluz: “We can’t say that in Granada because they are capable of taking us at our word.”
– The commitment could more than the personal interest.
–Sebastián Pérez was a councilor for the Presidency. We gave him a list with the addresses of the Cervantes institutes. When they saw the countries that had to send the magazine, the team questioned it. Sebastian said yes. A journalist who went to Japan on vacation found ‘Entrerríos’ in the shop window of the Cervantes Institute. I saw that from something small we could reach the world. When Córdoba was presented to the cultural capital, its poetry festival had a budget of more than 600,000 euros. I would settle for 10%.
– To put the label of the city of poetry, there is a will.
“I want them to take advantage of us.” We are in the Mariluz Escribano year. She is an author that we can project and include in the canon of literature. What can you contribute from politics to vindicate the illustrious name of a woman spoken of in the United States? Theses are being done in Italy. Is Granada going to make it profitable?
“We have a list of missed opportunities.”
–This not having any license allows me to knock on all the doors and explain that what I want is not for me. I am responsible for the legacy of Mariluz Escribano and I have given it free for anything that benefits Mariluz and the city. I am not one of those who pretend to live on the income from the work of others. Do you know how many women are in the literature manuals? Between 10 and 13%. If we want to build an egalitarian society we have to believe it. Textbooks must be changed. If we want a Granada of the future, funds are needed, not words. When I started to work they said to me: “What about prestige?” No, you see, with the prestige you did not pay a Nobel prize to come to Granada. Nor do you have to make a culture for the elites of this city but for normal people. We need spaces. The spaces for the poetry festival are too small for us. The normal citizen is deluded with one thing and then they fall back into apathy because they do not move. And I’m not just talking about culture, the situation of the residents of the North zone has no name.
–It is incompatible with a city that wants to be a cultural capital that in some houses they cannot read due to lack of light.
–The first thing is to eat and give people life tools. Federico said “half a loaf and a book.” Let’s see if we have the greatness of mind of those who have gone before us.
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