“This novel does not depict a real city, but rather a ghost city, a metaphor for the deteriorating world in which we live.” Luis Mateu Diez (Villabellino, Lyon, 83), Cervantes laureate and storyteller of imaginary worlds, speaks of space with the tone of someone who has known himself as still many times over. Receive at home and chat in a lounge where books by Roberto Arlt, Buero Vallejo, James Ellroy or Stephen King mingle. The referee, in the middle of the table, and as it could not be otherwise, a huge example of El Quijote. There are also several versions of his latest novel, Corner keeper (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2025), a journey into the heart of a new city, a parable of strength and decadence and a song with an unusual sense of humor that supports men in the face of disaster. “I think it’s an interesting book…and disturbing,” he smiled.
On Corner keeperthe city (and the world) is deeply turbulent, and often illegible. There is power, corruption, and a ghostly city where its residents seem to live amidst absurdity and ruin. A lively city, with echoes of Valle Inclán, but also Pinchon and Lovecraft in its gradually distorted architecture; A city abandoned by its rulers, where buildings collapse and the people’s spirit turns from confusion to conspiracy and violence. The story revolves around Ciro Cavedo, a “Sabandega” journalist who, in the author’s words, is articulate and subversive, observing the spoils of power from the corners and how the city enters into decadence. “Shero is not corrupt, even though he lives in the midst of corruption. He is a journalist who watches the disaster from all sides, because he knows that everything gets better from there.”
The author leans back, as if weighing down his words. “The city of the novel seems like a ghostly version of this world: a power that does not care what it professes, a democracy in decline, sects, beliefs, solidarities of abandonment… Everything is a secretion of emptiness. The mirror is pessimistic, yes, but there is still humanity. And in the midst of devastation, there are still people who resist.” The novel is written with a fitful pulse, full of rapid-fire images and verbal ramblings. “It has an accelerated pace, almost frenetic. I wanted to help the writing feel like a farce and a delirium. There are shaky phrases, grammatical ruptures, and that language that comes from power and that contaminates everything… Power is now using a language that neutralizes our imagination,” he deplores. He says he is pessimistic, but not cynical: “We live in a world with a lot of reality, a reality that haunts us. We have clarity. It’s constant noise. And in the midst of this noise, what I try to do with my literature is to imagine again.”
Between the city and the valley
The urban element is essential in your new novel. The writer confides in his love of Madrid (“I’m very much from Madrid, I’ve been here since the 1960s; I worked for four years at Ayuntamiento y fijate, and now I’ve been adopted into Ayuntamiento; which, for me, was a great honour,” he explains), but his novel’s city clearly has no real model. This is another one of the shadow cities that publishes its own personal maps, this Silama district associated with Macondo García Márquez, or Faulkner’s Bennett or Yoknapatawpha district. Faulkner certainly quotes from memory a phrase directly related to his new work: “The corners are still about to be doubled in man’s fate.” “The protagonist, Ciro, lives like this: he turns corners, looks, and counts,” he laughs with the wit of someone who still enjoys sarcasm.
Luigou smiles, and while someone changes the scene inside, Widyan remembers his childhood. “Oh God, there is a deep foundation in my land.” When the journalist trusts the same origin, he leaves the memory of the northern cities of León: “Pedrasicia, Vinayo, Canales, La Magdalena – where my attackers came from -, the Luna River… I have bathed there many times! Spend the summer among us…”, he says. “When I return, I feel a mixture of nostalgia and sadness, because the villages are often empty. Villabellino has all the splendor of a terrible mine, but now nothing falls. If it had been a mine, it would have been all.”
Memory and controversy
As the last winner of the award (in 2023), the writer deliberated last month in the Ministry of Culture to elect the new winner of Cervantes, who finally fell to Gonzalo Silorio (with a delay of more than an hour in the announcement). “Celorio is a great cultural figure in the Spanish world, director of the Mexican Academy,” he says. “We were all aware of his value as a writer and as someone very committed to his country and to its memory, but also to the memory of our homeland, America. He had an abuelo Astori, he had common roots with Spain… He was out this year, but I think Gonzalo was worthy of it at any moment.” In the midst of diplomatic controversy between Spain and Mexico, can a figure like Silorio serve as a bridge between the two countries? “Maybe because of my personal background, because of my family’s history of immigrating to Mexico, I have a very strong connection to the country. Luigo, in my mind, is the history that I have, the opinion behind it all, it’s a view of inherited memory,” he explains. “But I think the matter has been completely resolved. However, it seems to me to be a completely ridiculous resource. I do not understand asking for forgiveness on such heights. Too many words have passed and we are in something else.”
This was not the only recent controversy that raged around the Leones area, part of the RAE since 2001 (it occupies the threshold of Maiuscola): it also witnessed the clash between the RAE and the director of the Cervantes Institute, which, he says: “We lived with a lot of discontent because, more than I say, to Luis (García Montero) I decided to decide before the start of the conference (of the Academia de la Lengua, in Arequipa).
Return to your latest work, your voice fading a little, as you say from within your novel: “When I go into the street I see a desolate world, but with a vividness that keeps hope alive. The vigil in the corners – the journalist watching – sees a panorama that is not very comforting, but he keeps looking. And I think that is also the job of the writer: to keep searching until the world collapses.”
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