Q. In Parallel Loves, you address a little-known episode in our history, the Asturias Revolution of 1934. Why did you choose to set the story there?
A. I found it to be a very interesting and relevant context. There are hundreds of novels written about the Civil War, and I wanted to tell something different. The 1934 revolution is an episode that still resides in the memory of many people from my generation, whose grandparents experienced it firsthand. However, younger generations have almost no idea; it’s as if history began with the Civil War and nothing significant happened before. I thought it was important to rescue that context. It was a workers’ and miners’ uprising that occurred in October of that year, framed within the general revolutionary strike against the government of the Second Spanish Republic.
Q. The novel combines history, emotion, love, and prejudice… What were you interested in exploring this time?
A. I was interested in telling these events from two distinct viewpoints. On one hand, the workers’ struggle in the mining basins; on the other, life in the city of Oviedo. It was a time of great social polarization, and I wanted to show what life was like from both sides, without judging either. I worked hard to avoid tipping the balance towards one side, to give the story a sense of neutrality. I wanted to tell the 1934 miners’ revolution without passing any judgment, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Q. How did you construct the characters of the two leading families?
A. Life in the mining basins and life in Oviedo are the two realities I wanted to describe and showcase, two settings barely twenty kilometers apart that composed completely different worlds. So close and yet so far. In the mining family, there are three brothers; in the Oviedo family, two sisters. One of them falls in love with a civil guard and marries him; the other falls in love with an anarcho-syndicalist miner from the CNT. That is the trigger. To construct the mining characters, I had a lot of living material: my own father worked as a child in a mine; they falsified his birth date so he could start earlier. He was the «guaje,» the helper to the miner. Those were very tough times.
“The Asturias revolution of ’34 is unknown to many; I didn’t want to write another novel about the Civil War.”
Q. Documentation must have been key in this work, as it recreates a very specific historical event that took place before the Spanish Civil War in Asturias. How did you experience the research process? Did you find any surprises?
A. I have many friends in the Asturian mining basins whose grandparents lived through this episode. A friend who worked her entire life in a mine showed me firsthand what that world meant. Indeed, the documentation phase was a very intense process. I had close testimonies from the mining world, but deepening the context of the 1930s was more complex. I consulted press from different ideologies to understand that polarization. I wanted to be rigorous and be able to put myself in the shoes of all the characters. However, the most challenging part to document was the political and social context of the 1930s. I ended up turning to historical newspapers, reading publications of all ideological stripes, because the social polarization was enormous. There was even political violence that frequently spilled into the streets.
Q. The axis of the novel seems to be the tension between what one wants to do and what one must do, desire and duty.
A. Absolutely. The reader constantly perceives the tension between what the characters desire and what they must do. That is one of the axes of the novel. Decisions are never neutral; they always affect others, especially in a context like the 1930s, where everything was conditioned by family, politics, and society. Loyalty is at the center of it all. The younger sister battles against her family for love of a miner. In the working-class family, one of the brothers wants to rush into the revolution while the other holds him back. There is also a point I was very interested in highlighting: prejudices did not only flow from the more affluent classes toward the working class, but they also existed in the opposite direction. The bourgeois family was seen as the enemy of the worker. Hence, we have a double conflict.
Q. There is also a very realistic portrayal of life in the mine. How did you recreate that atmosphere, making it so present in your pages?
A. It is fundamental in the novel. The harshness of that work, the conditions, the families… All of that is part of the conflict. Even today, it is striking to imagine what it was like to descend into a mine at that time. I have spoken with many people who have shared their testimonies with me, and I also have many memories and accounts from my father and my uncle from that time…
“Decisions are never neutral: they always affect those around us.”
Q. The title, Parallel Loves, does it refer only to these two love stories, or is there a broader interpretation?
A. There are many parallels in the novel: between the two families, between the siblings, between the way each one manages the social context, between ways of understanding life, between relationships… But primarily, the title points to the relationship between the two sisters; it speaks of those loves that advance in parallel and, due to circumstances, cannot meet. The novel begins in the prologue with one of the sisters returning from France to reunite with the other after sixty years apart. Then, we go back and reconstruct everything that happened. In the epilogue, we return to that meeting. This backward glance inevitably has a nostalgic component. One must reach the end to know whether reconciliation is possible.
Q. To what extent does context shape the way we love?
A. Immensely. It is not the same to fall in love today as it was in the 1930s, especially if it was against your family’s wishes. The social and political context directly influences our decisions.
Q. Have there been particularly difficult moments during the writing, given that this story is close to your family history and your land?
A. Yes, especially when recreating episodes like the assault on the Civil Guard barracks. It was a very violent revolution, with thousands dead and detained. Documenting and narrating it was emotionally intense.
Q. Are readers responding as you expected? What would you like the reader to take away?
A. The recurring comment I hear from readers is that they appreciate that I told the story from a position of neutrality. That is what I value most because it was one of my main concerns. My heart was with the miners, of course; my family was involved in mining. But when I give a voice to the civil guard, I cannot create a caricature of that character. I have to provide him with arguments; I have to put myself in his place, just like with the priest or the bourgeois family. Readers are adults and do not need the author telling them what to think. In reality, I would like the reader of this novel to reflect. I do not aim to deliver closed messages, but to open questions. I hope the reader understands the complexity of that era and sees that history is not black and white.
