“I’m Ferran Torres and I masturbated for the first time when I was nine years old.” With this phrase begins the novel Gràcies per la tip (Column) by the writer Ferran Torrent; a work that was a resounding success with critics and the public when it was published thirty years ago; which would consolidate the Valencian author as one of the most outstanding creators of Catalan and Valencian literature and who, in addition, won the Premi Sant Jordi in 1994. The writer comments to this newspaper that “without a doubt it is, along with La vida en l’ abisme (Columna 2004 and Planeta finalist) my most personal work.
The novel, in which he used autobiographical elements, narrates the lives of the brothers Ferran and Pepín Torres, and the uncles Tomàs and Ramonet in Valencia in the sixties; characters who will co-star in other novels by the Valencian writer. They are also individuals far from the system and official circuits, needing to seek political and sexual freedom in a dark and repressed society. It is, simply, the “universe” of Ferran Torrent. “It was a look back, to explain a world that was ending,” comments the author.
Torrent had achieved great success with his first novels such as No emprenyeu el comissari or Un negre amb un saxo, both also published by Columna. But it was Gràcies per la tipina, his eighth work, that represented a fundamental leap in his profile as an author. “It is evident that there are elements of my life in the novel, but what I wanted was to create a family that had nothing to do with tradition, I wanted to capture a tolerant, libertarian family in a period that awakens passion in me as it is Valencia in the sixties,” he comments.
The novel was made into a film in 1997 by Francesc Bellmunt, with Santiago Ramos and Juli Mira as the Torres brothers’ uncles. “It was a good adaptation and Juli Mira was very good in his role,” says Torrent. After thirty years, the writer appreciates that part of the success was due to the fact that “it was a generational novel.” And he acknowledges that he is not tempted to “revisit” it: “I don’t even do it with other people’s novels, because I am always tempted to correct things.” But what do other successful Valencian authors think about what the work of the Sueca writer meant?
The writer Rafa Lahuerta, author of the novel Norway (Drassana), comments that “the most significant thing after 30 years since its publication is that it ages without losing an atom of its capacity to seduce. I have reread it twice in the last 10 years and “It maintains all its virtues tense. 50 years from now, if there are still readers, it will continue to maintain them. It is a classic. Nothing more can be said.” The Valencian author adds that “I read it when I was barely 22 or 23 years old. The impact it had on my way of interpreting literature was enormous. I discovered the very powerful feeling that Valencian was not only a language of poetry and essays, but also served to tell urban stories full of live resonances.
The writer and journalist Paco Cerdà, author among others of El peón” (Pumpkin seeds) or April 14 (Libros del asteroide) comments that Gràcies per la tipa “created a character: “Rompetechos Ferran Torrent. He broke the ceiling for the Valencian: a book in our language could be a best seller. He broke the ceiling for his fellow writers: he showed that here you could make a living from literature, and also in the minoritized language.”
The author also comments that the work “broke the ceiling for the publishing market: there are fewer excuses to explain why a good book in Valencian cannot filter through to the entire society. And it broke the generational ceiling for thousands of readers born in the eighties. who were approaching, for the first time, a world of Francoist repression and, at the same time, a society of brothels with teenagers and alcohol without taboos, a mythical Valencia that, seen and read for the first time from the regions, seemed half Rome and half Chicago –without knowing what one and the other were–”.
Paco Cerdrà concludes that “Rompetechos Torrent showed that the character – his – was not for a single episode. His series has now been running for almost thirty seasons. And he’s still there. Boxing in the ring.”
For his part, another renowned Valencian writer, Xavier Aliaga, author of novels such as El meu nom no és Irina (Andana) or Les quatre vides de l’oncle Antoine (Angle), points out that the novel “arrives at the right time for Ferran Torrent”. “In the transition between decades he published not very successful novels such as Cavall i Rei (1989) and L’any de l’embotit (1992) that seem to indicate a certain creative exhaustion.” He adds that “Sedaví, an intuitive writer with a level of self-demand that is certainly commendable, is aware. The answer is one of his great works, winner of the San Jordi Prize in 1994 and entry on the scene by the Torres brothers and which is considered a of his most personal novels, a certain change of register with a story set in the Valencia of the Franco regime”.
Aliaga concludes that: “He himself recognizes that with Gràcies per la tipa he managed to mature and flourish. But there is also the collective consequence, very beneficial for the literature of the Valencian Country, of generating a reference author capable of reaching many general readers and Sénia band. An open path that was very beneficial for the group.”