Gonzalo Suárez: how to arrive without staying

Gonzalo Suárez, writer, director, and film actor, is 90 years old and continues to convey an original and compelling vision of the world. The renovator of Spanish narrative with novels such as Rocabruno bate a Ditirambo , the filmmaker with a passion for Lord Byron and Mary Shelley in Remando al viento , is returning to bookstores with a curious revival: El caso de las cabezas cortadas , a surrealist detective comic he drew in Paris in his early twenties. It had remained unpublished and is being revived by the publishing house Nórdica, with a prologue by Javier Cercas, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Suárez's work.

I had followed him closely for many years but hadn't met him personally. We agreed to meet at La Taberna del Alabardero in Madrid, but the meeting got complicated, and we ended up holding it via video call, with Suárez comfortably ensconced in the aforementioned venue. And we started talking, of course, about Barcelona.

⁄“The Barcelona era was the best of my life. Its 1960s sophistication presented itself to me as an alternative and a boost.”

“My time in Barcelona was the best of my life,” he recalls. “I arrived in the city with my wife from France in 1958 with empty pockets and immediately felt welcomed. I worked for the editor Luis de Caralt, doing everything from proofreading to delivering packages.”

New relationships soon blossomed. “My best friend at the time was Joaquin Jordá. Also Ana María Moix, charming and very clever. Having been tough in Paris before, the sophistication of 1960s Barcelona suddenly presented itself to me as an alternative lifestyle and a driving force for growth.” But I alternated between chic environments and other atmospheres: “Boxing interested me for its style; it wasn't about hitting, but about feinting, until my brother broke a rib.”

For a time, he devoted himself to sports journalism. He had good connections: his parents were separated—something very unusual at the time—and his mother's partner was the famous Helenio Herrera, who coached Inter Milan. The team's president, a prominent industrialist, provided him with financing for his first films in exchange for reports for his oil company. In Ditirambo , a landmark film from the so-called Barcelona School, Suárez wrote the script, directed it, and starred in the lead role.

“It was suicide!” he exclaims. And he clarifies: “I adapted to the noir genre; I really liked Chandler and Hammett.” At the same time, he played with the influence of the Nouvelle Vague, which he encountered through the actor Maurice Ronet. “I liked Truffaut more than Godard, even though he made films with a naturalistic context, whereas I wanted to go off the beaten track: in my films, I tried to let the camera take the emotional lead over what was being told.”

The avant-garde movement took its toll on her: her ambitious 1970 film , Aoom, starring Lex Barker and Teresa Gimpera, “was a phenomenal failure; it was booed at the San Sebastián Film Festival, although revenge has recently come; it's being revived as a cult film.” At that festival, she began her friendship with director Sam Peckinpah. “It was love at first sight, like it was for me with Julio Cortázar. The spontaneity of an encounter... it only takes a moment to know if you're with someone on the same wavelength.”

He doesn't remember who gave his books to the author of Hopscotch , "perhaps Carmen Balcells, who was my agent. But when she took over the boom, she left me behind, even though we were friends and her husband, Luis, and I used to go to boxing matches."

With twenty-five feature films under his belt – Morbo, La Regenta, Don Juan in Hell ... – and many other published titles – Gorilla in Hollywood, Citizen Sade, The Sources of the Nile – he states that “the reality of cinema and books is that they are not real, that led me to invent a world, following Helenio Herrera's advice: don't look where the ball is, but what space the opponents leave.”

Rodrigo Sorogoyen is going to film an adaptation of his novel Operación Doble Dos , and Random House is reissuing La suela de mis zapatos , a collection of sports chronicles. Gonzalo Suárez still sees himself as someone who isn't very accommodating: "Every time I've arrived somewhere, I've preferred to go somewhere else to see what happens."