Lorenzo Silva signs ‘the opposite forces’: “Pandemia discovered social fractures from which we were not aware”

You would like to send Bevilacqua and Chamorro out of Spain for your next investigation

The writer Lorenzo Silva returns to the bookstores with ‘The opposite forces’ (destiny), his “first novel about the pandemic”, which in his opinion exposed “a series of fractures that already existed” in society and of which the best people were not “conscious.”

“(The protagonists and their companions) not only fight against that opposite force that criminals represent, but also do so against the lack of the system for which they work and the society in which they live and also with the difficulties that exist among their citizens,” said the author in an encounter with the media in Illescas (Toledo).

The story constitutes the fourteenth delivery about the investigations of Rubén Bevilacqua (‘Vila’), a host of the Civil Guard in the Central Operating Unit (UCO) and its eternal professional couple, the Brigade Virginia Chamorro. It is set in the pandemic, during which the protagonists must clarify two crimes.

It is not the first time that the writer writes about COVID-19, he already did it with his ‘Alarm Diary’, where he narrated his observations of the first 50 days of confinement; and, together with Noemí Trujillo, with ‘the forge of a rebel’. As he explained, he decided to start writing this story because a friend told him in those days of Pandemia that corpses were being found and doctors were certifying deaths from the portal. “What better time to commit a crime than when death gallops run by the streets,” he said.

Before journalists, he said that one of the civil guards who appear in the novel is called Víctor Caballero in honor of a Civil Guard of Teruel (Aragon) who died in a confrontation against an armed criminal. His brother asked him that as a tribute he baptized some character with his name and he agreed. On this side, he recalled how today or civil guards, or police, or military are considered a risk profession in Spain, something that he considers as a “pending subject”, and has criticized that the country is not “generous with those who play it.”

Asked about whether the victim’s choice-a elderly-is a criticism of politics that was followed in the attention to the elderly during the pandemic, Lorenzo Silva wanted to make it clear that the characters “are not puppets” of theirs, but that on a personal level he considers that the “due precautions” were not taken and that everyone “was overflow “if they had been a bit more forecast.”

“From there because the responsibilities in each case are punctual. If we talk about the elderly and residences the results are dreadful in all autonomous communities. And there are some of which are most spoken, but there are others that are not spoken and the results are even more dreadful,” he stressed.

Likewise, asked about his opinion about how essential workers have been treated, including civil guards, the author has referred to a book he read recently, ‘who is afraid dies daily’. This includes the memoirs of Judge Giuseppe Ayala, who acted as chief prosecutor of the ‘Maxiprocess’ against the Sicilian mafia, in which some defenders of the law “died killed and the others were relegated to ostracism.” “And this ingratitude towards public servants, because it seems to me … well, the Italians and we are quite close,” he said.

30 years with the “two best friends” that has given her life

In his opinion, those who, like him, are dedicated to “narrating the world” that surrounds them have “a certain duty” to face the narration of the pandemic “despite the inconveniences” now that five years have passed the outbreak of Covid-19 and there is already “perspective.” Although he recognizes that it was an “that everyone brings bad memories” to everyone, the writer has claimed the “transformative impact” that he had “in senses not necessarily negative or not necessarily unfavorable.”

Thus, he recalled that he read Quixote with his youngest daughter for the fifth time during the pandemic, “present” rereading in the novel. In this sense, it has influenced the closeness of Illescas (Toledo), where the action of the novel is located (partly), and Esquivias (Toledo), the house where Miguel de Cervantes wrote El Quijote. “One of the things I had in my head when I believed (Bevilacqua and Chamorro) was that I was going to write a story of walking knights of the twentieth century, which have passed to the XXI, because there is something of that ‘Quijotismo’ and that ‘walking cavalry’ in the work of the civil guards,” he observed.

For this part, Lorenzo Silva has indicated that he does not feel “prisoner” of his partner of civil guards and that they have given him “freedom” to “travel” other paths and write “weird things”, where he has also found readers. For him, the 30 years that have been fulfilled since the conception of his partner of civil guards have been three decades in the company of “two of the best friends” that life has brought him, “imaginary friends”, but “very favorable” for his existence and his trade as a writer.

After 30 years, he observed that the body has better means, even if they do not “have plenty of”, and that their staff has arrived “very varied people who better represent the diversity of Spanish society” and have emphasized the extensive formation of the new civil guards. In addition, he has reflected on how to include Virginia Chamorro in his history from the beginning was his “greater success”, since he has been able to tell through it the “great transformation of Spanish society”, where the woman has gone from “occupying a domestic or subaltern place” to being able to represent positions of authority.

Bevilacqua still has several years to fulfill age to retire. Asked by Europa Press for future stages, Lorenzo Silva has indicated that he would like to send Bevilacqua and Chamorro out of the country and that he is attentive to what happens in Ukraine, where Spain has already sent civil guards.