May 68 did not reach everyone or everywhere, because it was not the same to live, for example, in Barcelona or Castellón, as in Llucena, a Valencian town that does not have two thousand inhabitants in Alcalatén. . It is there, in her town, where Emma Zafón sets her first solo novel, Casada i callada (Empúries), although she had previously published No iba a sal y me lié (Roca, 2016), co-written with Chimo Bayo around the route. of the bakalao.

In his new book, Zafón “wanted to talk about my mother’s generation, those born in the late Franco regime, in the sixties, and who became young in the late Franco regime and the transition, who began to enter the labor market en masse, but they did not get rid of responsibilities or domestic tasks.” She conveys it through Aurora, who first lives an intense love story, yes, and marries and has children, but discovers that her dream had another side, “violence at a time when the concept of violence did not exist.” of gender, which did not even have this nomenclature, and of the process that is experienced in a small town, with all its complexities, what they will say, the social pressure of the time”, taking as a model women he knew: “I was three or four references who had gone through similar situations, and explaining it was also paying tribute to them.”

Although the novel places the novel in a time of change, with the arrival of democracy and divorce, but “with the mental framework of the time, because they had been told that love was forever, that the husband would be forever and that they would grow old.” together… and no.” The writer and journalist is aware that this still happens, and even more so in rural environments: “I criticize the neo-rural model, full of romanticism, there are people who believe that living in a town means that they bring you zucchini from the garden every week, that they give you oil, lead a quiet life, sleep, go for a walk…”, but when push comes to shove, everything is smaller.

“There is – she emphasizes – very little sociability, friends are who we are, since we were children, you have no option to make more friends, and there comes an age in which everyone gets along and you are left very out of touch. I am critical of these dynamics, which weigh more on women, and when you become a spinster they tell you that it must be because no one loves you for a reason. On the other hand, with men it is even said ‘look how clever he is that he doesn’t have to put up with any woman’. “If I had done what I have done in my town… oh my, they would have burned me at the stake!”

In fact, he also defines it as “a book against marriage, because we must deconstruct the model that is so ossified from centuries ago that there seems to be no other way of thinking.” But even though he makes “a lot of defense of being single and other forms of affection, falling in love, we all fall in love, for the love of God. “I’m not a tupperware, huh!” After all, “I’m not going house to house with a shotgun to take women to a hippy orgy. I’m just saying that we have been with this model for a long time and it is very good for whoever it suits; However, what if we open our eyes a little? “I am very surprised that in 2024, criticism of monogamous couples and marriage receives insults as a response,” he says, remembering what a priest threw at him, and that his articles in the Valencian press have a lot of echo on the networks. .

But the book also shows the evolution of that society, including a certain openness towards LGTBI identities: “I mention it, but in the town there is no one openly gay, and then people tell you that if such is the case, we all know it.” . But if they can’t behave as they really are… It seems that it is very normalized, but I understand that they don’t come out of the closet, because there is a lot of halter. “It’s incredible, even now.”