Bernardo Atxaga recovers the figure of Urtain in ‘Golondrinas’: “There is a direct relationship between fascism and boxing”

The Basque writer Bernardo Atxaga has recovered the figure of the boxer José Manuel Ibar Azpiazu, better known as Jose Manuel Urtainin his new novel ‘Golondrinas’ (Alfaguara) and has reflected on the “direct relationship” between sport and fascism.

“There is a direct relationship between fascism and boxing. For example, for Mussolini, Primo Carnera was his way of presenting himself to the world.“Atxaga said in an interview with Europa Press and later described the Basque boxer as a “product” of Franco’s regime.

Precisely, Urtain’s suicide in 1992 is the backdrop for the story in ‘Golondrinas’, in which The writer intertwines several deaths to reflect, among other topics, on “excluded or abandoned people”, the “helplessness” of humans in the face of death or the absence of shelter.

This last idea, explains Atxaga, has a very clear parallel with the current situation and the threats that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, made this Tuesday about killing “an entire civilization” in Iran, in the midst of an offensive alongside Israel on the Asian country.

“Given what is happening with Trump, there are two questions. The first is: is it new or has it happened before? Was King Leopold of Belgium just as criminal (as Trump)? The answer is that it is not new. The second question for me is: does this end here? or is it just the prelude? This is the prologue of what is to come. The answer is, unfortunately, yes,” he lamented.

This has been a consequence, in his opinion, of the “imposition” of something as “intrinsic” as the “relativism” or “irrationality” that exists with religion.

“Every opinion is valid, any opinion is compared with a truth. Someone says this house has five floors and another says ‘no, it has 44, why? Because it’s my opinion“, he criticized and then explained that the third reason for this pessimism is that there is an “economic basis” that makes relativism and irrationality possible.

In that sense, he has assured that Trump is a “wimp” who responds to the wishes of the economic base of society such as the arms industry or Elon Musk.

“There is a theory that seems plausible to me which is that (Trump) is nothing more than a puppet that the arms industries, the Musks or I don’t know what have put in place. Because they know that they tell the fool ‘ask NATO and such to increase the defense to 5%’ and the fool asks for it,” he said.

“CHORAL MEMORIES”

Although the author had announced in 2021 that he was retiring from writing novels, he has confessed that he has a “dynamo” within him, which is the desire to write that does not exhaust him.

“When I finish a novel I am so exhausted by the tension – I also write in two languages, even more exhausted – that I get up, get angry and think it’s over.. But three months go by and that desire to write that I have had, that I have not inherited (…) makes me come back,” he concluded, ensuring that he is now working on some “choral memoirs.”