"Imagination as a Resource Against Pain and Horror"

Ángela Banzas (Santiago de Compostela, 43 years old), finalist for the Planeta Prize with 'When the Wind Speaks' (with a prize of 200,000 euros), shares that her novel is born from the experience she endured when, at just seven years old, she was hospitalized for peritonitis, which nearly ended her young life. During that year-long hospital stay, she encountered another reality, that of many young patients, including a girl who was not going to survive, to whom she began reading stories.

From these vivid memories, Banzas has crafted this historical drama with Gothic overtones, featuring Sofía, born in 1939, and set in post-civil war Galicia. A strange ailment leads Sofía to a hospital where the horrors of human experiments are hidden, and there she discovers the existence of a lost twin sister.

The author explains that 'When the Wind Speaks' is the most special story she has written, as it is "a very intimate novel that stems from a childhood memory" that shaped her perception of life and death. The narrator left her job as a consultant in public administration a few years ago to dedicate herself fully to writing thrillers. She is known as the voice of Galician suspense.

- Another novel set in Galicia, your homeland...

- My perspective is one hundred percent Galician. My characters have that way of being, feeling, and viewing the world in a Galician key. I thoroughly enjoy working on the setting in Galicia, and I hope that enthusiasm is equally received by the reader.

- Luz Gabás, a member of the Planeta Prize jury, has described your novel as having a "Galician Gothic style".

- Yes, she said it has Gothic tones and also a certain lyricism. The climate gives us this, which helps with this perspective that has this somber point. I like to say that with literature you discover the darkness of the universe and I write to paint that darkness with stars. And this is the most Gothic part, the darkest part, which are our shadows, but shadows can be illuminated, and that is what I have tried to do in this novel.

- You have mentioned that your book originates from your own hospital stay where you met a girl with a name similar to yours (Ángeles) and of a very similar age. What happened to you to be in the hospital at 7 years old?

- An inflamed appendix led to peritonitis and I was very ill. I almost didn't make it. I spent some time in the hospital until I could recover, but while there I caught another illness in the operating room and spent a year hospitalized. In my case, everything turned out well. The thing is, as soon as I could get out of bed, I would go from room to room with my IV, talking to other children, and there I encountered a reality I was unaware of.

- A very harsh reality of very sick children, isn't it?

- Children a little older and girls a little younger than me, who left a significant mark on me. There was a girl who had spent her entire life in the hospital. Just as I read, she spent all day painting what she saw through the window. That's why windows are so important in this novel, because they are the world seen by those inside the hospital. Those who wait, and that hope is captured in the novel.

- Many authors, to develop their plots, to concentrate, to write... acknowledge that they have to sacrifice many things, is that your case?

- I am a mother (I have two children) and I would like to dedicate a little more time to them when they ask to play and so on. But literature does me a lot of good, I enjoy it immensely, just like my role as a mom. In the end, you know that you have to dedicate time and work to writing. In my case, it is vocational, but I never dreamed of being a writer, let alone a Planeta finalist. Look, I'm saying it out loud right now and I'm struggling to accept it. That's why I studied something else (I have a degree in Political Science and Administration and an MBA from the European School of Business in Madrid), because it seemed very difficult to achieve.

- You wrote from a young age.

- Yes, yes, yes, from a young age. At 7 years old, I was already writing. I started with poetry, I loved reflecting and shaping the world with my words, and above all, understanding everything I couldn't comprehend. That precious imagination is very present in the novel. Imagination is the resource against pain, and against horror.

- The admission of this girl is the excuse to tell a terrible story of mystery in that hospital...

- Yes, it is a novel with a lot of intrigue, because the novel begins with a prologue, when Sofía is about 20 years old and is in the cemetery in front of her own grave. She sees her name written and wonders who is there. Then, she tells us her whole story. There is a very beautiful part when she is in the hospital and meets the girl who will become her best friend, but there are quite a few unsettling passages and a lot of horror because things happen inside that hospital.

- It is a Galician hospital from the post-war period...

- Yes, the hospital in Santiago de Compostela, which is now the parador and was previously the hospital of the Catholic Monarchs, but before becoming a parador, until the 1950s, it was the provincial hospital.

- Why did you choose the post-war period to set your novel?

- Because it was that long night of absent deceased and for the treatment I wanted to give with a gaze between life and death, which coexisted.