Luis Mateo Díez Satirises a World in Demolition

We live in times of disorder and demolition. A darkness and anxiety "that threaten to dismantle democracy, ideologies, and imagination." Luis Mateo Díez (Villablino, 1942) laments this, as he sings a grotesque requiem for a world crumbling in 'The Watchman of the Corners' (Galaxia Gutenberg).

Clinging to writing as a lifeline, the octogenarian narrator, academic, and 2023 Cervantes Prize winner, weaves tales with corrosive humour - "in a farcical and grotesque manner" - to critique the political and moral behaviours of a disordered world coming to an end.

He asserts that ideologies "are rotten," that "democracy has been battered so much that it is falling apart," and that "ideologies and beliefs are liquidated."

He also laments that imagination and the ability to create stories are "losing the battle against power and technologies, which are annihilating them." A drama that leads us to "a dreadful poverty," claims someone for whom fantasising and writing is "a vital necessity."

Set in one of his ghostly Cities of Shadow, this time unnamed, the "oppressive present" takes centre stage to describe a local cataclysm that will also be global. Luis Mateo Díez recreates it in an "expressionist style with touches of surrealism" in "a farce of disorder in a world in decline in its ways of life, values, and deteriorated forms of government and democracy."

Ciro Caviero, an eccentric journalist and radio chronicler, is the voice used to certify the threatening darkness of the times. Of more than lax morals, entangled in a delirious plot of corruption, murders, and kidnappings, "he reflects the low moral order of the city in which he barely survives."

"He is an unreal journalist, the watchman narrating the decline we live in. A deformed, deranged, self-interested, and sold-out character," explains his creator. He maintains a certain clarity of conscience "to perceive that sense of loss, of abandonment by the rulers." The novel narrates it "in vignettes, with disenchantment, certain melancholy, and a bizarre, Valle-Inclán-like humour that borders on the grotesque and absurd," explains the author.

For the writer, a proof of decadence is "the linguistic delirium in which we live." He parodies it by satirising politicians who hide behind clichés like the 'Axis of Evil' or the 'Progressive Coalition Government' and other "delirious neologisms and verbal excursions."

"These are the nonsense that power uses to sell us hard-to-digest products," he denounces. He believes that the construction of that "deceptive and soothing language" is an old habit of power "which, with some neologistic disguises that are cringe-worthy, distorts and contaminates the language it wants to establish in its favour."

A power "that has never ceased to fear imagination and to try to neutralise it" and that also benefits "from the overwhelming information deluge" in which we are immersed. "An excess of current affairs that contributes to disorder and impoverishes our lives, giving ammunition to the deception of power," the writer points out.

Through the novel parade police, judges, and politicians. It speaks of sectarianism and populism in "an absent and lethargic society," buried "under the rubble of lost democratic ideas and the sense of coexistence, kidnapped by corruption and absent and irresponsible rulers."

"The world we know is ending, and we shall see what comes next. The human being will disappear, and nature will endure," he ironically warns in an apocalyptic tone, noting that, as he has always done, he passes reality through the sieve of literature. "Nothing is explicit, as it has never been in my work," he says of this Valle-Inclán-like game of mirrors.

Having reached 83, Luis Mateo Díez does not reconcile with old age "which is one of the worst misfortunes of life." "That of the elderly's lucidity is a big lie, so only the ghosts of the past await us," he says. He endures old age "thanks to fiction, imagination, and the ability to live other lives." "Writing is the support of my life," reiterates a narrator with a firm pulse who will continue with the pen in hand "as long as possible." When it is time to hang it up, he will accept it "with resignation."