After the Franco regime and the Transition, the writer ends his trilogy on modern Spain with 'Transbordo a Moscú' (Transfer to Moscow).

Sometimes Eduardo Mendoza (Barcelona 1943) likes to write standing up on an old high desk. He leaves the house and walks a few meters to his small study: just a bookcase, a desk with a red vintage lamp that his wife gave him, a black umbrella hanging on the wall and that desk from another era that is no longer manufactured. In this sober space he tries to keep office hours: «It is good to maintain a certain distance, discipline and order.

Although it is useless for me.» Typical Mendoza irony. The same pragmatic mischief of one of his longest-running characters: Rufo Batalla, the adorable scoundrel (although he has softened with age) who, like the author's alter ego, has starred in a trilogy about modern Spain. With Transbordo a Moscu (Transfer to Moscow, Seix Barral), Mendoza takes Batalla to the years of the Cold War and the Iron Curtain, to an Olympic Barcelona and to the year 2000, the symbolic closing of a century.

Read the entire interview here in its original language: EL MUNDO - CULTURA