Fernando León de Aranoa: "I experienced the blackout on a train in the middle of nowhere with 300 other people, and in eight hours there wasn't a single bad look. That gave me some faith."

From the playgrounds of childhood to the losses of adulthood, Fernando León de Aranoa brings order to his Leonera (Seix Barral) . With one hundred new short stories, sometimes barely two lines long, the filmmaker returns to literature to talk, among many other things, about the passage of time, separation, pain, and desire. And that thing called the midlife crisis. When the feeling, he says, of mortality arrives. A book permeated by humor and melancholy in which there is room for denunciations of the treatment of emigrants, such as Los esos . A book in which the director of El buen patrón plays the role of Scheherazade, writing "so that things don't end."

And for many other things. “You write,” León de Aranoa (Madrid, 1968) emphasizes, “to find something more encouraging in that which isn't, an explanation for the things you don't understand. I think one always writes from a place of estrangement from things and the world. And fiction offers parapets I like to work with: humor, paradox, a certain form of poetry. And it's also important to try to understand and comprehend oneself through writing. And the title of the book, Leonera , has to do with the desire to establish a certain order, even if one fails in the attempt. Also, order within myself, within the things I've experienced, particularly in recent years.”

"How can we explain the death of a loved one? There's no diagnosis that can explain it."

“Ultimately, for nonbelievers, fiction is a way of giving meaning to things, to things that don't have any and never will. It often acts as consolation, as a parachute. It's the closest thing I've found to a religion. How can you find an explanation for the death of a loved one? There's no diagnosis that explains it, nor any consolation that will help. That separation, that dismemberment, is so brutal... but there's a certain solace in reflecting and writing about it,” he summarizes.

For example, when writing about the midlife crisis and the losses that begin to surround those who have reached that age. “They are important changes in your life and, above all, in your way of understanding how things are or how they will be, and all of that reaches the stories, and that melancholy is there. Sometimes I've tried to portray it with more humor, as in The Betrayal of Mirrors , and other times with more pain, as in Fifty Years . It's a stage you feel when you see your parents getting older. The death of my father has left a deep mark on me,” he acknowledges.

Of course, as in his films, social themes are present. Like immigration. “What Trump does with it has a lot of influence in other countries, but in Europe we are enough to legislate against it. All the European legislation in recent years has been invented to prevent people from reaching Europe, to keep them stuck in the water,” he reflects.

And he says that the reactionary wave worries him "especially for those who come after," who will find "a very turbulent world and, above all, a sense of the collapse of moral and ethical structures, which is what we should most try to combat and repair. There should be moral leadership in Europe rather than military or economic leadership. On social media today, there is a celebration of the defeat of the humble and of immigrants. And before, in terms of communication, one tried to be alert to what was fictional, what was false, in reality, and now we are almost the other way around: one has to look for truth in the unreal, in the false, the fictional, in what is shown to us. Before, one tried to detect the trap. Now, one has to detect the sincere and the honest. It is a terrifying symptom."

But despite the global fall, León de Aranoa points out that he believes “in human beings. I know we're capable of the worst, but sometimes also the best.” He cites the great blackout as an example: “I experienced it on a train in the middle of nowhere, waiting eight hours for a bus. But groups quickly formed, seeking common ground. Human beings are relational, and in uncertainty, they need to share. And in the face of a truly difficult situation, people rose to the occasion. With 300 people and eight hours of uncertainty and discomfort, there wasn't a single dirty look, a single unfortunate question. That gave me some faith.”