Irene Dalmases
Barcelona (EFE).- Since he became known in 2006, Víctor del Árbol has been building a solid literary corpus distinguished with several awards. Now he returns to the shelves with “Nobody on this earth”, the story of a hero, Inspector Julián Leal, who is determined to prove his innocence before a corrupt system.
A remote Galician village, where corpses begin to appear after a visit from Leal; the city of Barcelona, in 2005; Mexico; a refined murderer and a journalist who still believes in the power of the word, are some of the ingredients of this novel with a protagonist who “proves that when there is nothing to lose, one can go all the way to do a bit of Justice”.
In an interview with EFE, Del Árbol maintains that although it may be hard at times, this story, published by Destino, is “beautiful in the sense that Julián Leal is a hero, because he wants to save a child, the Chinchilla, and saving that child from the adult that he can become, in reality, what he does is save all children ».
«In the background of the novel -he specifies- there is that cry for freedom, that we win or lose, we have to keep fighting, we cannot bend the knee. Leal knows that by saving the Chinchilla boy, even if he loses, he will win because he will have defeated the system ».
On the other hand, and as usual in the stories of del Árbol, who was a Mossos police officer for years, the past has its weight, although the novelist warns that “you believe that the answers are in the past but what is they are the traumas, the fears, the unresolved questions».
Nor is it obvious that many “in the face of evidence of a crime of corruption, of what does not work, look the other way, are silent” and even, as occurs in this fiction, “it is very like in Fuenteovejuna, where nobody forgets, forgives and does not is innocent”.
human conflicts
Contrary to the discourse that literature is dead, Del Árbol forcefully affirms that “as long as there are human conflicts and crime, there will be a need to tell about it and reflect in depth on it, with which literature will exist as long as the human being exists.” ».
In his new title, he considers that none of the crimes he narrates are gratuitous, “they always respond to something, they are not passionate, of opportunity, but rather they occur because there is a corrupt system that tries to protect itself and when it feels threatened it releases ballast”.
For the Barcelona author, power has to do with “impunity, with being above moral judgments and ethics.”
«I always say that power has no ethics or morality, neither a sense of good nor a sense of evil. It satisfies itself, that’s what makes it terrible, and it makes those who are faced with that power heroic.
Another characteristic of the novel is that it seeks the role of the police, “an ecosystem that has become archetypal, but I find that it lacks a bit of truth. The American detective model is no longer valid, nor is that of the British novel of solving crimes based on observations and deductions.
In his opinion, “our model is missing, closer to reality, and this novel reflects all kinds of policemen, from the most vocational, to the one who breaks the cliché, or the so-called ‘caiman’, who has lived through the passage of time.” from the Francoist police to the democratic one and who has tried to readjust to reach retirement without problems ».
Nor does he forget the commissioner with aspirations who wants to become a senior official.
Víctor del Árbol does not rule out that some of his new characters may continue to have pages in the future in other stories “as long as the reader wants to accompany me again.”