The topic you've chosen is not very common: The dreams of ETA members in various Basque novels. What did you see in those dreams that you haven't seen in the other parts of the narratives?

I had to give a conference at the conference “The Basque conflict in Basque literature” organized by the UEU and I found it practical. I cannot put in an ideological veneer. Also, I don't know who said, maybe Kafka, or Sánchez Piñol, that dreams are perfect stories.

It seems that these dreams are useful for deciphering the profound meaning of each novel. Do you think the novels could work without those passages?

Who knows? I can no longer imagine them without those dreams. In these dreams, the narration intensifies, becomes more intense and after sleep nothing is the same. They help clarify the profound meaning of the novel. It's about unfolding the dream properly. Leibniz said that anything contains and expresses the entire universe. That's right, the universe has been screwed into that stone. It can be a beautiful factory to unfold the treasures and worlds that keep things, and in a way similar to dreams. You can find the whole novel wrapped in a dream. But also on a regular page: Erich Auerbach showed it in the book Mimesis. I think he was a Jew, and in the Nazi era, he didn't have a library for consultation, just some single books; and he pulled out of the everyday pages the essence of novels.

He says that, more than Freud's definition (the dream is the realization of desires), it is better the path proposed by Hillman to understand the dreams of the Etarras. Did you want to stop tackling the issue in a classical way?

I am not able to answer how often Freudian dreams are questioned when interpreting them, I do not know; seen from above, it seems that Freud is today the most widespread point of view on the sense of dreams. But I haven't been driven by a rebel revolutionary intent against the main line. As I studied my dreams, I realized that only one Red Notebook by Arantxa Urretabizkaia worked, according to Freud's vision. The others were much more in line with Hillman's view: Hillman is a disciple of Jung and says death sends us dreams. Gaston Bachelard’s immense work has also been very good for me, The air and dreams, The water and dreams, The earth and the dream of rest…

Death is the theme that appears in the dreams of many of the ethnic groups.

In the dreams of many ethnic groups, not in all the dreams of all ethnic groups, except one, the second Frozen Friend of Sarrionandia, the dream of the only writer who is of ETA.

You did not want to go too far into the conclusions.

I wanted, but I couldn't. Before I came to the conclusions, I had run out of my courage. Death is too hard for me, like many others, I'm sad, stupid and mute.

Do you think that in the Basque novels that will be published in the future this trend will change?

Now I'm not following it systematically. In Koldo Izagirre in Egarri Egunak harbour there are no dreams, but important things are said, for example, “you have to dream everything to ask everything”. But dreams don't exist. And in Twist of Harkaitz Cano you also see everywhere the disappearance and phantom, even death, an ideal context for poetry, but there are no dreams. I think the literates are a few bulls and they do it to provoke it [laughs].

“One might think that ETA’s greatest contribution has been the Basque literature on ETA in the Basque Country.” The phrase is provocative and has already reacted, such as that of Laura Mintegi. Does ideological debate conceal literature?

Yes, and many times the leaders of the ideological debate are very vampires with literature. They are only interested to the extent that they can use it for their political ends. I don't know what literature is, but that has little to do with literature. However, just as the ideological debate covers the literary sphere, media noise hides the ideological debate itself. There's nothing to do. So, this book hardly serves anything.

.…

It doesn't help you get out of the well, nobody will listen to you. Same ARGIA or…

What is the deepest footprint of the dreams studied?

Even after several months of the publication of the book, the truth is that I remember everyone: Eleven steps is the one that the mother orders Abaitua to enter the coffin and die; the appearance of Metxa, a psychopath of the new entry into prison of the old Agirre; the coughing of Marta and Pataki of Pasaia Blues in the kitchen; the orbit of Triku and Komarov over the Earth, the son of the accordionist, until the oxygen runs out. Sometimes writers don't warn you that they're dreams, like Txillardegi or Cano. Izagirre also not always. On the contrary, these heavens are not dreams, but jumps guided by the will to the past or to the future. They decide that they will drive the dream here or there, like shamans. I don't know how to interpret it, because it's not just in novels written by women, but in female characters.

With the materials previously published on the blog, you have completed your last two books, both this one and Talatik tiroka. What does paper offer to these electronic texts?

The blog is a kind of laboratory of tests and experiments, but then, before I get to the book, I go a thousand laps into the blog's ideas, I run them, I rewrite them and I re-correct them, until the book's deadline is over. The book shows many texts that are not in the blog. In addition, there are readers “still” who do not read blogs but do read books. And some of the greatest essayists organized books as collections of blogging writings, like Nietzsche. Humanitarian, too human, Joyful science, Beyond good and evil, Genealogy of morality... They look like they just got out of the blog. It may be a matter of generations, because I’m a “platoon”, but it’s our book; maybe it’s a bit of prejudice and it’s going to be overcome…

The book has the freshness that academic literary analyses often lack...

Yes, I've had a better time writing the dreams of the etarras than with the thesis. And I don't forget Joxe Azurmendi's advice: writing for people, for anybody, and not for academy schools. Thanks to the Internet, new opportunities have been created to get out of the right academic, more in literature than in essay.

Not long ago, you said that there are still many visions of the Basque conflict to be written. But is it possible that in a Basque novel, for example, an honest torturer appears?

It is difficult, given the sociological origin of most Basque writers. People would take Unai Iturriaga singing bertsos as when they put a theme like “you are Elena de Borbon…”. Surely the reader would consider it too sought after and haunting as a mental exercise. Anyway, characters like Pedro Vargas, Rodrigo Mesa or Javier Fontecha de Twist seem very mature and deep and they are characters who have drunk from the trajectories of Galindo, dorado or Julen Elgorriaga.

Have you followed the subject of the literatures of nations in armed conflict? Models to imitate?

The path of Nightmare in Ireland, linked to the IRA, has not been addressed in the Basque Country: great surprises from chapter to chapter, a timid and tempting detective, the misleading Internet guru harnessing financial globalisation, the unexpected unveiling of Nazi secrets, the Chinese enigmatic who steal sensitive software to destroy the Vatican. All this in a single novel that revolves around the armed conflict in Ireland.