France Culture broadcasts a documentary on Atxaga’s Bilbao

Bernardo Atxaga takes us on a stroll through Bilbao’s old town, to the places where he began his literary career. With humor, depth and poetry, the author talks about his arrival in Bilbao and the meetings that guided his beginnings as a writer. He talks about his relationship with Gabriel Aresti, who he admired and who set him on his literary path, the publication of his first manuscript in 1972, and adopting his literary pseudonym, going from José Irazu Garmendia to Bernardo Atxaga.

The places visited evoke another time. Characters come to life, and we reach the depth of poetic challenge, of social and political struggles. The route shows us a Basque Country devastated by war and the bombing of Gernika, a country muzzled by the prohibition that keeps it from speaking its own language.

Without rewriting history, Bernardo Atxaga’s simple stories take us back to the semi-clandestine world of the literary avant-garde of the 1970’s, under Franco’s dictatorship. We meet some of the great Basque and Spanish writers of the 20th century, figures like Gabriel Aresti, Blas de Otero, Luis Cernuda and the Andalucian Antonio Machado.

Atxaga’s tour, with his philosophy and the frankness of his story, is captivating. It is accompanied by texts and poems read by various voices that have been key in the writer’s life; the writer whose path walks the line between reality and imagination.

The audio documentary, directed by Christine Diger, will be broadcast this Tuesday and Thursday at 23:00 on France Culture.

UPDATE: podcast online: