Melilla, as part of the International Women’s Day events, this coming week will host the presentation of two books by the Leonese writer Violeta Serrano.
On Wednesday, March 15, it will be the turn of “Flowers in the trash” in the assembly hall of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Celebrations and Equality from 7:00 p.m. and on Thursday 16, same place and same time, from another of his books, “Migrant Power”.
For these acts, which are part of the 8M commemoration, the entrance will be free and free, until full capacity is reached.
Violeta Serrano has affirmed that “Flowers in the trash” is a personal story of the so-called ‘lost generation’ in which she expresses her experiences and reflections on the current world and the future, the lack of opportunities faced by young Spaniards and the need to “learn to fall and get up”, or the differences between Spain and, as she says, “the” Argentina, a South American country to which she emigrated as a result of the great economic crisis of 2008 and from which, although she returned years later, she never it will return “all the way”.
“Above all, we have to learn to fall down and get up, to be creative and learn to get ahead without anyone coming to help us”, emphasizes Violeta Serrano (León, 1988) in an interview with Europa Press on the occasion of the presentation of ‘ Flowers in the trash’ (Ariel, 2022) this Saturday, October 1, at the La Perecquiana bookstore in Valladolid, in an act that will start at 12:00 p.m. and in which she will be accompanied by the journalist Lucía Tolosa.
“Daughter of Spanish democracy”
As he already points out from the preface to his book, his generation is that of those who “had promised prosperity in exchange for obedience, and they fulfilled it”, but “the other part of the deal never came”. On the inside pages, the author acknowledges the complex position of these young Spaniards, who were called “the most prepared generation in history”, but who had to face a paradigm shift in which “the stability in which they they raised disappeared».
For this reason, he proposes in his work the term ‘hinge generation’, since its members connect the world of their parents, who grew up “with many deprivations”, but joined the labor market at a time of economic growth, with that of younger people who have developed “without the hope” with which the “lost generation” started.
In this panorama, he maintains that this pivotal generation “also asks for a great opportunity”, which he sees in the possibility it has of “creating a new world” and “a new way of being in this world” starting with Spain, which “in You actually have a lot of opportunities to move forward.” «You have to reinvent yourself every time, and this is not easy for us precisely because of that past that we have drank all our lives. We came from an absolutely stable period”, explains Serrano, who contrasts this situation with that of young people from other countries such as Latin America, who “are used to ups and downs and uncertainty”. “Necessity sharpens wit and we have to awaken it,” he says.
«After all, I can say that I am privileged, and precisely for this reason I do not want to remain silent. I am the daughter of Spanish democracy and I need to feel that we have not forgotten the smell of blood. That is why I also write”, Serrano emphasizes in his book, where he claims the importance of concepts such as universal basic income and public services to avoid a greater social deterioration that drags the well-being of European countries towards a model of inequality more typical of the Latin America to which he emigrated.»
