Leticia Sala (Barcelona, 1989) fears that her small gestures – the position of her legs, the way she looks, a slight blush – reveal some truth. The body shakes its head, betraying us. “I have a hard time hiding my emotions on a physical level.” He says this when I remind him of his giddiness in some photos. “The exposure thing is horrible, it scares me to be this transparent.” The modesty of being portrayed by others contrasts with the nudity of her literary voice.
His books are read like a special diary dotted with internet codes. A candid self-portrait that connects people with its honesty. “I have spent my whole life working better in the world of ideas than in the terrestrial one,” he admits in his second book, In Real Life. Now she explains that being a mother puts her somewhere else. “If I had to say a picture it would be my daughter grabbing my arm and pulling me down.” She has been writing a diary since she was born so she knows how her mother’s life has changed. “In addition to our blood type or how much we weigh at birth, there are other equally crucial facts that need to be uncovered: What was my mother like when I was born? What did you fear or desire? What changed his development?
Sala conveys a suspended melancholy: “Lovers break up making noise. But friends quietly, without warning, drift away. A sadness that heals through creation. I think of sensitivity as a generator of creation, that’s how we deal with pain. When we shape it, it gallops freely and away. It doesn’t belong to us.” Pain that intensifies during puberty. “I was very unhappy until I was 26, but thanks to writing I knew how to channel it”.
Sala grew up seeking approval from his father. Also with the expectations of the girls who heard that they will get where they want. He later became a lawyer and worked at the UN, but changed the law for words. She was 26 and the best was yet to come: posting and meeting her daughter’s father on Instagram. Her debut, Scrolling after sex, was accompanied by a network boom and collaborated as a songwriter on Rosalia’s songs “one pure power, a true star”.
Love is his great theme: the wounds (“I wouldn’t be able to love you as I love you now if I didn’t love others as I loved them before”), as well as the luminous aspect of loves. “True love is light, the rest is electricity.”
This summer, she became obsessed with Elizabeth Strout’s Oh, William and an idea: Knowing true love is more real than your journey. “When you see so many breakups, you wonder if it’s possible to believe in a long-lasting love. And the idea of Strout gives me confidence. To put it simply: you already knew that love. It’s the kind of love that I thought would be deprived of me. Then comes the fear of losing it, but You should be thankful you’re experiencing it, because there are many people who don’t know him.”