What would you do if you had two months to live? Interview with Santiago Díaz, author of Talión

We are pleased to have today on our blog with Santiago Diaz Cortes (Madrid, 1971), writer of more than 500 television scripts. Santiago is the author of the novel black that is moving readers: Talion, published by Planeta.

Talion It is a novel that breaks the genre's schemes. Starring Martha Aguilera, a cold, lonely woman, with a relationship that has just ended, who has no family, no emotional ties. Marta is a journalist and, while investigating an arms trafficking network for her newspaper, she receives news that will change her fate: a tumor threatens her health and he barely has two months to live. The shocking thing about the situation is that Marta Aguilera He decides to use those two months to do justice, applying the Talión law.

Actualidad Literatura: A novel, Talion, and two questions for the reader: What would you do if you had two months to live? And is it lawful to apply the retaliation law to recurring criminals: pedophiles, terrorists, traffickers of women, violent extremist groups ...?

What reaction do you expect from your readers when they read your novel? What changes do you want to produce in us?

Santiago Diaz Cortes: As you said, I want the reader to ask those two questions. I suppose that since most of us have emotional ties, we would spend the two months with our families and friends. But what if we managed to eliminate that component from the equation and we were really alone in the world? Would we really go lie on the beach or try to make our mark? I don't know if what Marta Aguilera does is ideal, but it is her option. And with regard to the second question, we all initially answer that it is not justified to apply the law of retaliation, but as the reading progresses and we meet victims and villains, that initial security falters and we may find ourselves wishing that Marta destroy the bad guys without compassion. Ultimately, apart from having a good time reading an exciting story, I want to give readers pause.

AL: With a subject of such depth and two questions so direct and complex, have you received many answers? Are there readers who have shared with you what they would do?

CDS: Many Talión readers assure that, in the same situation as the protagonist, they would also take a few scoundrels ahead. Honestly, I think that we say that because of the anger that sometimes produces us when we see that some criminals responsible for shocking crimes do not pay as we would like. But at the moment of truth, we are civilized and we all trust justice, although sometimes we do not agree and we go out to protest, something that seems very necessary to me. If we applied the law of retaliation again, our civilization would go back several centuries.

AL: Behind Marta Aguilera's desire for revenge there are many frustrations and wounded emotions: from the disenchantment of society in the face of cruel acts of violence that go unpunished to the loneliness in which she lives motivated by a chronic inability to feel empathy. «The truth is that I don't remember ever feeling guilty about anything.»Affirms the protagonist at one point in the novel.

What weighs the most in Marta's decision? What has to happen to a person so that, knowing that he is going to go unpunished, he decides to apply the Talión law and do justice where he considers that there is none?

CDS: What pushes Marta to do what she does, apart from that initial lack of empathy that you mention, is having no future and not suffering consequences for her actions, neither for herself nor for those around her. Throughout the story she meets characters who need someone to do justice on their behalf and something inside her begins to change. Suddenly, and perhaps because of that tumor, she begins to feel things for those around her, she experiences a feeling that she did not know before and hatred for those who have destroyed her life appears. So, as she herself says, she decides to leave this world cleaning up some dirt ...

AL: The novel has an A side, Marta Aguilera, determined to give away her last weeks of life to do social justice and a B, Daniela Gutiérrez, the Police inspector in charge of detaining her despite being charged herself with anger and desire of revenge, after her husband and one of her children were killed in a terrorist attack. Is the third question to the reader, what would they have done if they were in Daniela's shoes?

CDS: Until the moment in which we know the personal story of Inspector Gutiérrez - and despite having suffered from victims such as Nicoleta, Eric or Jesús Gala "Pichichi" - we had managed to keep ourselves emotionally safe, but when we accompanied Daniela as a woman, we suffered with her the evil of criminals and we began to put ourselves in her place. What would we do if tragedy struck directly at us? Inspector Gutiérrez, because of her profession, knows that she must stay within the law, but the need for revenge is sometimes too powerful and it is difficult for her to contain herself. That brings her closer than the assassin she must pursue and she doubts ...

AL: Very diverse scenarios in your novel. The Madrid of the night, where money flows between drugs and luxury prostitution, and the Madrid of misery, of the neighborhoods where drugs are trafficked and children live in abandonment. Even a part in the Basque Country, in Guipúzcoa. What does the north of Spain have in the crime novel that even for a little while you want to get closer to it?

CDS: For me personally, either to send my characters or to move myself, I love the north of Spain ... although the truth is that as much as the south. The wonder of our country is that we have everything we want within a stone's throw. In the north I enjoy the climate, the food and the landscapes, and in the south I enjoy the beach and the light. Downtown is where I live and where most of Talión takes place, but we moved to the Basque Country to discuss the ETA issue. It is part of our recent history and, despite the regrets, we are an advanced country and I believe that we do not have to censor ourselves. The rest of the environments that I portray, some of them as crude as La Cañada Real, really exist. Reading is the only way to get into those places and feel safe.

AL: Will we ever see Inspector Daniela Gutiérrez in your novels?

CDS:  Although it is still not sure, I would say yes, whether there is a second part of Talión or in a new case that has nothing to do with this story. I think I have managed to create a very powerful character that many readers would like to see again at a crime scene.

AL: Moments of change for women: feminism has become a massive phenomenon, it is a matter for the majority and not just for a few small groups of women stigmatized for it. Two female protagonists for your first novel, the murderer and the police. What is your message to society about the role of women and the role we play at this time?

CDS: I believe that we are approaching the moment in which we are not struck by the fact that the president of a country, the director of a multinational or even a serial killer are women. When we stop talking about it, it will be when we have really achieved an equality that still resists in some aspects. Fortunately, machismo is being eradicated little by little until the day comes when it disappears completely, but it is also true that men often feel intimidated. I myself have doubted in this interview whether to refer to those who buy Talión as readers or as readers, and that does not help us to normalize the situation either, which I think, after all, is what we should aspire to.

AL: After writing the script for very successful series and many of them very extensive in chapters such as El Secreto de Puente Viejo, accompanied by a team of scriptwriters, have you felt the loneliness of the novel writer?

CDS: Yes. When you write a script, you are usually part of a team and you have colleagues with whom to discuss the plots, since we all speak the same language and we are going in the same direction. During the writing of Talión, although I had my brother Jorge (also a writer and screenwriter) and my partner to comment on my doubts, you have to make the decisions alone. On the other hand, writing a novel without the limitations that surround a television series or a movie (budget, actors, sets ...) has enchanted me. I have enjoyed a freedom that I had not known to date.

AL: How is Santiago Díaz as a reader? What is that book that you remember with special affection, that it comforts you to see it on your shelf and you reread it from time to time? Any author that you are passionate about, the kind you buy the only ones that are published?

CDS: I like to read everything from historical novels (I declare myself passionate about Santiago Posteguillo and his trilogies about Roman emperors) to Manel Loureiro's thrillers, Marwan's poetry (whom I did not know until recently, but I admit that I have discovered in him a special sensitivity), the terror of Stephen King and, of course, the crime novel. In this field I like a lot of authors, from classics like Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Patricia Highsmith, James Ellroy or Truman Capote to Don Winslow, Dennis Lehane ... As for Spanish authors, it is mandatory to mention Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Lorenzo Silva, Dolores Redondo, Alicia Giménez Bartlett, Juan Madrid, Eva García Sáenz de Urturi ...

The book that I reread from time to time is "The Elephant Numbers" by my brother Jorge Díaz, one of the best novels I have come across in my entire life, I really mean it.

And my favorite writer… Before it was Paul Auster, but now we are angry.

AL: Digital book or paper?

CDS: Paper, but I recognize that sometimes digital is much more comfortable, because in a few minutes you have everything you want at your disposal.

AL: Literary piracy: A platform for new writers to make themselves known or irreparable damage to literary production?

CDS: Irreparable damage to literary production and, above all, to authors. I understand that people want to save a few euros, but we live in society and you have to be civilized and think about the effort it takes to write a novel so that later, at the click of a button, it is hacked and all work is ruined. Piracy of series, movies, music or books must be pursued as harshly as possible. It made me very funny to talk one day with a taxi driver who complained about private drivers who picked up passengers, calling them pirates because they did not pay taxes, but later he confessed without shame that he was pirating television series.

 AL: The social media phenomenon creates two types of writers, those who reject them and those who adore them. What is the most important aspect of you, that of a mass communicator or that of a lonely writer who prefers his work to speak for him?

CDS: I hate them and I also waste a lot of time with them. I only have one Facebook account that I hardly use, although I am beginning to realize its importance. I wish I could ignore them, but I'm afraid I'm going to succumb to them sooner or later… (PS: actually, I've already succumbed and opened a Twitter account: @sdiazcortes)

AL: What are the special moments of your career that you have lived and those that you want to see? Those that one day you would like to tell your grandchildren.

CDS: One of the most special was when I received the first call from Puri Plaza, my Planeta editor, telling me that Talión had been read and that she had been fascinated. Also the day I received the first copy at my house, the one that I saw my partner get excited when reading the acknowledgments and, of course, the presentation a few days ago at the El Corte Inglés Cultural Center, where I was surrounded by all my friends .

What is to come I still don't know, but I hope things happen to me at least as good ...

AL: To close, as always, I am going to ask you the most intimate question that a writer can ask: Why do you write?

CDS: First of all, because I can't think of a better way to earn a living than by telling stories. I do not know if a writer is born or made, what I can assure you is that I do not know how to do anything else and that without this I would be deeply unhappy. In front of a keyboard is how I really know how to express myself.   

Thanks Santiago Díaz Cortés, wish you many successes in all your facets, that the streak does not stop and, after you have hooked us with TalionWe look forward to your next novel.