No other writer has sparked such a debate in Spain in recent years as Ana Iris Simón with her debut “Fiesta” (2020, no German edition yet). The then 29-year-old writes about her adventures as a child, about her love and attachment to her family, to her grandparents and to her cousins. Written in a simple, very direct language, “Fiesta” combines a childhood in a small village in La Mancha called Ontígola from memories, experiences and snippets of scenes.
Ana Iris Simón was born in 1991 into a communist family. Raised an atheist, she secretly went to church from the age of nine. She convinced her parents that she could receive baptism and first communion. The title of her novel alludes to the fact that her family of showmen went from fair to fair, but also to the fact that, in their opinion, Spanish society has become a “fair” through mass consumption and gentrification.
“When the family breaks up, then one is driven
to work for the elderly in old people’s homes
and the children stay in kindergartens “
“I envy the life my parents led when they were my age.” She also started the sentence with which she headed her first chapter at the beginning of the speech, which she made heavily pregnant in May at the invitation of the Spanish government Was part of a conference on demography. But the sentence is often seen as a provocation: “Whenever I say it out loud, someone looks at me crookedly,” she says. In the aforementioned speech, which quickly went viral online, she explained what she meant by that: “At 29 years old, my current age, my parents had an eight-year-old daughter and were expecting their second child. My mother worked as a postman. My parents took out a mortgage and bought a car. Most of all, they had the certainty that they would keep their jobs and pay the mortgage, and the hope that everything would get better. “
As an example, she tells of her grandfather, who “in the seventies was able to feed eight children with two hectares of vineyards”. On the other hand, her cousin Rubén, who is the only relative who is still farming today, “fights for the livelihood of his three daughters. And he can count himself lucky to have a family, because most people my age don’t have any ”.
Grandmother had more options
“Fun fair” is about the lifestyle of the generation around thirty and especially about family and motherhood, about the compatibility of work and family. In a television interview, Simón said: “I think my grandmother had more opportunities in life than we think. We judge their life from the present; we think women didn’t work back then. But my grandmother worked in agriculture. Except that she couldn’t realize herself through her work. And that’s what women my age are told: ‘You have to realize yourself through your work’. That is the paradigm of, Sex and the City ??. “
She is asked whether young women today are not freer than their mothers and grandmothers. Simón’s answer: “I think I have another imperative: we have to work to realize ourselves.” In this context, she quotes the young Spanish writer Carolina del Olmo, who points out that motherhood is often stigmatized. Because it seems like giving up a full and emancipated life as a woman that consists of work. Ana Iris Simón: “I often have the feeling that I’ve exchanged one yoke for another.”
The family is a source of love
Even if she expresses such “traditional” views about the family, the author does not want to be pigeonholed. In the television interview, she says: “The progressives made the mistake of thinking that the family is a source of abuse, of suffering for women, that there are only exceptions and no rule families. But the family is usually a source of self-realization and love. The Conservatives, on the other hand, make the opposite mistake of believing that there is a norm, the traditional family, and that there cannot be any exceptions, which is why they do not recognize the various families, for example. “
Against the talk of “toxic masculinity”, she claims that masculinity continues to be attractive. Ana Iris Simón also deals with feminism: “Maybe we achieved equality on the wrong side. If we have tried to destroy the myth of romantic love, it is not because it was harmful. We have not denied it either, we were and are only mediocre, and mediocre people do not like to sense something that strives for the sublime or the epic ”. At several points in “Feria” she bluntly mentions reproductive and housework as the major task for women.
Working to have loved ones cared for
In an interview with the newspaper “El Independiente” she deepened the thought: “The socio-economic model has dissolved the family. The family is called, old-fashioned ?? criticized. But it is the great nucleus of solidarity. And when the family dissolves, then one is driven to work to ensure that the old people stay in the old people’s homes and the children in the kindergartens. Is it revolutionary to continue this flight forward? CS Lewis said, ‘If it turns out that you are on the wrong track, whoever turns and goes back first is the most progressive ??. For five centuries we have said, ‘What comes next is better’. Technological progress, the renaissance, the new man … But for some time now we’ve been banging our heads against the wall. It is time to check whether revolution doesn’t also mean preserving certain things. “
In a conversation with the news portal “Aceprensa” the author speaks about faith in God: “The same pattern is repeated over and over again in public discourse: Let us burn the old, because what we create later will be better because it is new is … Don José Luis, a pastor from Ávila, where I now live, told me the other day that the supposed death of God led us to be polytheists and to create a multitude of gods: work, money, sport, leisure … Ideology is one of those little gods that we worship. It becomes more and more clear to me that the human being is a spiritual being. ”In“ The Unconscious God ”Viktor Frankl speaks of the fact that God is there, even if we don’t want to see him. The way atheists deal with death shows that they are not that atheist after all. At least that’s what I’ve seen in my family. We thought that the death of God was in itself a positive thing, a progression and an absolute liberation. But the attempt wasn’t that great either. “
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