Juan Lagardera, journalist and author: “Valencia was the first region of ‘movidas'”

That psychedelic era of making the world seem like heaven brought a journalist with a long cultural career and now a novelist who can convey real atmospheres as if history and heroes still existed.

Juan Lagarderathis guy The breath and joy that has made Valencia the promised land for those who believe in a paradise open to all madness is revived.this past Wednesday night he presented the embers he kept in memory of such a happy time.

He concentrates that time on a novel that is not as fictional as melancholic reality and is also happy, because because there is nothing in the book, those who presented it said that it does not lead to the atmosphere that turns ‘movida’. In a kind of universe where people (Valencian from Madrid) live from morning to morning with the pleasure of living and making art. It was a night without the light of Valencia, a city that never goes out.

The presentation is at the junction of Calle San Mateo, in an area that portrays the essence of that ‘hectic’ era in Madrid, close to everything and since then, a light in the city has been less bright than in leap years. That Lagardera is a young man in the past who couldn’t have imagined writing that brilliant gift.

Here is his book, ‘Psychedelic. Great time’, edited by smuggling They introduced him there. Gallery Traverse Foura light-filled space, poet and gallery owner Silvia OrtizY Maite Sebastian, He is responsible for the magazine ‘AD Spain’. The two spoke to Lagardera as they were interested in knowing how someone who preceded them in their love of art lived through that period when she once felt as though she was born to be eternal.

Now, a memory (and a novel) of that time he spoke to us before the presentation. This colleague of mine, who for a long part of his life was an important journalist for Levante-EMV of the Prensa Ibérica group. Now 64 years old, combing a lot of white hair, he has not lost his presenters’ wonderful memory of the life the novel tells, and he wrote this book from its cover (a colorful selection of people). drawn by foreigners and Valencians Gino RobertThose who open the text with the desire that that time never passes), seem to be the perfect juices of that era, which even the act of presentation makes invincible.

What did you want to tell in this book?

After a busy journalistic life, although I never kept a diary, I was mistreated from today’s bubble and accumulated almost nothing. I remember spending an entire afternoon with Octavio Paz during the Second Congress of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals. [se refiere al Congreso Internacional de Intelectuales y Artistas, que acogió Valencia en 1987 para conmemorar los 50 años del II Congreso de Escritores Antifascistas de 1937, que se había celebrado en la misma ciudad en plena Guerra Civil] And since I didn’t take notes, I only vaguely remember what we were talking about. Because of such things, I have a feeling that I have lost all the details of my life as a journalist. I’ve always wanted to write a novel on a desert island, too, and this is the novel. I started a few drafts and then threw them away or lost them on a computer. But there was something quite advanced in my experience with different journalists who were already my boss, almost all of them quite psychotic, and then I realized that this couldn’t be my first book. because it would be kind of vendetta, negativity? And I don’t want that. What I want is to save my memory. The pandemic came, I met an old friend and decided to tell his story: the story of a group of young people who experienced with tremendous intensity many vital innovations from the second decade of the 70s. First the political ones, then the sexual ones, the cultural ones, and of course the drugs. Avoidance and drugs as a form of knowledge. From there, the epidemic came, I fell ill and wanted to find my voice, I stretched autofiction far beyond what was allowed, until I had a kaleidoscope, whoever reads it, seems undecipherable because it’s intuitive, but the proper names are not there and there is no way to establish identity . All this to avoid reality hunters. In other words, I wrote a novel.

It describes a time when the nature of Valencia was synonymous with freedom. This feeling was more in the street than in the houses.

effectively. Our colleague Fernando Delgado told me the same thing the other day. Because here I am talking about bars and squares rather than houses. There is a bourgeois residence in the center of the city, which was suddenly conquered by the ‘underground’, but there is also talk of a city called Turiapolis. Obviously Valencia. In short, what I was going to do was in the mood for freedom and permissiveness in Valencia before Movida Madrileña. Valencia, then, was the first region of the moves.

How has this burst of vitality changed the lives of young people?

Well, it changed him forever and radically. There have been victims, because there have been people out of control. I remember a great musician, a bassist, who went to the United States and then came back addicted to heroin and the heroin killed him. Heroin has had a devastating effect on many people, not just him. Opposite the bar where all the traffic started was a pharmacy that mostly sold syringes. Everyone went to get their syringes because he was in the front. And I guess there came a time when that pharmacy only sold syringes. Then came Movida Madrileña and years later Ruta del Cod. But it was already crazy stuff, it had nothing to do with what we went through in Valencia in the ’70s, ’80s, we saw Carmen Alborch as the dean of the Law School and so she went from a reactionary Faculty to a reactionary Faculty. progressive faculty Carmen was also an important figure in Valencia’s nightlife, and she was the one who founded the first major gallery for young people. At that time, the publishing house Pretextos y descubrimientos así was also started. But Valencia never managed to have a decisive influence on the rest of the country.

What legacy do we have today from that period in Valencia?

Some notable authors such as IVAM, Pretextos publishing house, Vicente Gallego and Carlos Marzal. There is also a character like fashion designer Francis Montesinos. What happened is that after this cultural explosion came an explosion of nationalism. This is in my book; A large part of nationalism monopolized much of the culture.

What did nationalism bring from Valencia and what did it take away?

Nationalism gave Valencia a piece of its own truth, but at the cost of influencing the other. So Valencian society is a complex one, because since the 16th century two cultures have coexisted in it. On the one hand, there is the Valencian language, and on the other, the Castilian language, which has always been associated with the Franco regime. It was oppressive and Valencian nationalism was liberating and festive. Expressing yourself in Spanish was not welcome back then. At university the Valencian culture got stronger and… I don’t know: he didn’t seem very open to living with Spanish.

Does this mean that Spanish culture is still seen in Valencia with some skepticism?

Yes, that’s how it is in Valencia. Today there are very good Valencian novelists who write in Spanish, such as Bárbara Blasco, Elisa Ferrer, Lola Mascarell. By the way, all three are from Tusquets. There is also a very powerful phenomenon, the author of which is Rafa Lahuerta. they beg us. In addition to Carlos Marzal and others, of course.

Those of us who went to Valencia at the time you describe psychedelic we always found the happy city. Has this changed?

We’re older and we don’t go out or meet as much as we used to anymore. Or at least I don’t do them anymore [risas]. But I think the new generation has a different communication style with us. He will be too.

Was everything more fun back then?

Then we were younger and thought we were immortal [risas].

And at your age, how do you see Valencia?

Valencia lags behind the rest of the country and does not realize it. I think life in Valencia is nice, it has a good climate, the people are very social… but that’s how life was given to us, before we were the third city in Spain and now we are the thirteenth and something like us. The football team belongs to a Chinese broker or something. Well, the owner of Mercadona is also from here and that saves us a bit. But Valencia is a city that has lost its rhythm.