“It is by no means a book of overcoming”, assures Elisabet Riera (Barcelona, ??1973), aware that this is a possible reading of her new novel, Once upon a time it was summer the whole night (Males Herbes), one of the nine finalists for the Omnium award for Best Novel of the Year. And its narrator is a woman who, at the age of 49, after being diagnosed with cancer, embarks on a journey, first through the Sierra de les Alberes and then the Salines, to follow the trail of the trobairitz Alba de Peralada.

And he continues: “There is a transformation, as happens when someone begins to delve, from the intellect or from emotion, or from faith or from art, into a deeper path . It’s a vital journey, the most important thing we can do.” During the journey, the narrator begins by imagining the story of her trobairitz and the reader also encounters the lonely walker of the Winter Journey, the Winterreise, the cycle of songs that Franz Schubert composed with verses by Wilhelm Müller, from of which the novel is structured: 24 chapters in two distinct parts.

The trigger for the book was not illness, but: “For many years I have been interested in both trobairitz and the romantic universe, and listening to the Winterreise in such a romantic context as the Schubertíada in Vilabertran, where I go almost every year, it was the click to bring these two worlds together. I came into contact very deeply with music and lyrics, and related this journey on foot to the trobairitz. Although historically the 18 that are known are from Occitan, one could well have passed there, and more so in Peralada, where there was a small court”. The text is thus a tribute to these troubadours, who serve him to invent one and to fill the text with real quotations from at least one verse of each. “There is a lot of hybridization – he continues -. I dissected the poems and put them where I liked, mixed with verses from the Winter Journey, whether in Alba’s mouth, the walker’s or the narrator’s, with great freedom, because the three voices are one.” In any case, “I didn’t think I would make a romantic manifesto in the form of a novel, I never work like that. The voices at the beginning were more balanced, more separated, but it was necessary for the more contemporary voice to move the action forward, that’s what makes it a novel because, otherwise, it would be a treatise”. In fact, in a first version the narrator was suffering from the death of a loved one and in a second from the breakup of a relationship, but “I had breast cancer and I decided that this made me understand the story better, but this it’s not the essence, just a trigger and an excuse to talk about other issues”.

It is “a path of loss, but also of voluntary abandonment. This woman has lost her health, she has lost her youth, she has lost her loves, she has lost many things”, and draws a biblical parallel with the narrow gate and the rough road (Matthew, 7:13-14) through which the narrator travels -take the mystical path-, trobairitz -courteous love as a spiritual path- and walking -romantic idealism-, all three “go to nature to look for a different voice, the world soul”. Because once close to death, the narrator “searches if there is something more, an answer, a revelation, an enlightenment, and I refuse to admit that having returned you can continue to live the same. You can do the same things, but what you won’t be able to do is look at the world the same way.”

The writer, also founder of the Wunderkammer publishing house, does believe in “the redemptive role of art, which has the ability to bring us closer to the beyond, it is a spiritual path, as love should be , and that’s why they’re here together. For this reason the trobairitz represents the path of transcended love, because she is not next to the beloved, she does not care, she loves and enough, just like Schubert and his lonely walker, choose the path of art , life as a work of art, which is eminently romantic. Living like this changes the perspective a lot, to begin with you never get bored; you screw up fifty times, but you don’t get bored. I don’t believe in art as entertainment or in superficial culture.”