María Larrea and the search for the origins of “nobody's daughter”

A woman from a bourgeois family gives birth to an unwanted baby, María, and with the help of the gynecologist, gives her to a Basque man and a Galician woman in one of the last cases of illegal adoption in Spain. He, the son of a prostitute, she a victim of abuse, both examples of the most humble emigration, they already lived in Paris and raised her the best they could and knew how. That is the narrative pillar on which this book is based, “a tribute to my parents,” says Larrea.

In France, the author grew up suffering “a racism that is not what Arabs and blacks suffer, it is more subtle.” She remembers teasing about her accent, her birthdays that her supposed friends did not attend, and being the only one in class without Canal Plus, a sign of distinction at the time. “Mine was a very strange childhood, but I didn't realize that we were poor,” she remembers.

At the same time, her circle was made up of other Spaniards who, like her parents, were trying to get ahead in an environment in which she herself could not escape the violence, sometimes very real and sometimes hidden, of her father, now deceased. , who became an abuser when he drank.

“Some things are not forgivable, but they can be redeemed if you know the circumstances, if you look for the origin and experience of life,” says Larrea, who conceived his story first as a script and then as a novel. And now, given the impact of the book, he once again plans to turn it into a movie.