Madrid (EFE).- The GAL murders have been “the moral banner of Basque terrorism for decades and they still are today,” says the writer Lorenzo Silva, who dedicates his latest novel to the dirty war and the consequences of the fight with illicit means against those who undermine coexistence through terror.
“Púa”, edited by Destino, gives this novel its title, which does not place the action in a certain country or time since, Lorenzo Silva assured this Tuesday at a press conference, it intends to enter into the mechanisms of what happens in many countries and talks about the moral conflict in which societies and people involved in the dirty war are involved.
Púa is the name of the protagonist of his novel who, retired as a second-hand bookseller from his past in the dirty war, must return to action at the call of an old colleague.
Based on the investigations, testimonies and documentation that he has handled over the years for his novels, Silva (Madrid, 1966) assures that it is an “allegorical” book and considers that with the perspective of time the dirty war “tends to be a unnecessary evil.”
However, he explains that there are people who have justified it and “even a Nobel Peace Prize winner”, such as Barack Obama, believes that it is a necessary evil, ordered extrajudicial executions and personally authorized operations of this type.
Lorenzo Silva: the GAL murders have been the moral banner of Basque terrorism
In this sense, he pointed out that “the GAL murders have been the moral banner of Basque terrorism for decades and they still are today. Whenever an ETA assassin is named there are three or four names that immediately come to the fore to put them on the scales”.
And this “propaganda use” is a “ballast” that threatens to be lasting, Lorenzo Silva emphasizes.
“The GAL was counterproductive, not to mention a minister ended up in jail. And to what extent did it put an end to ETA’s terrorism? Well, to a very small extent ”since he ended up with other procedures that had to do with compliance with the law, he recalled.
But, he has insisted, it is not a novel about the GAL since if he had wanted to do it he would have named the organization: “I am not particularly afraid of getting into puddles”, recalled the author, who recognizes that there will always be someone who says, not only about this matter but about others that he has dealt with in his previous novels, that he is “too hard or too soft”.
“Púa”, he has said, focuses on the pawns and not on the “brains” and ensures that it is not at all a complacent account of the dirty war.
But, he points out, a person who gets involved in the dirty war is still a human being: “The people I have talked to are not indifferent to what they had done. I have not been able to speak with a torturer who is happy to have tortured”.
And although he acknowledges that there are people who boast of these things, he explains that these characters do not interest him: “I am interested in the one who has crossed the line and has that moral trait.”
Its protagonist also admits at the beginning of the story that he is a bad person: “With enough encouragement we are all a bad person. We all have a rabid bug inside. Fortunately, most of us never let go or do it moderately.
The publisher Emili Rosales, who has presented the novel with Lorenzo Silva, has explained that it comes out with a first circulation of 60,000 copies and that this launch marks the 25th anniversary of this author in the Destino publishing house, of which he is the most representative author. since Miguel Delibes, with more than 40 titles published.