The Cadiz town of Rota and its famous military base are the main settings of the novel The Last Dove (Planet), by Men Marias (Granada, 1989). A thriller that, based on the discovery of the mutilated body of a young woman, and at the hands of the disturbing sergeant Patria Santiago, proposes a plot in which the past offers the answers that the present demands.
–What will the reader find in The Last Dove
–It is a thriller that starts with the appearance of the body of a 19-year-old girl, savagely mutilated and with huge wings sewn to her back. The only clue that the investigators have to solve the crime goes back to the disappearance of a girl in Rota in the 50s, when the Americans arrived in the town, at the military base. And from there the reader is going to find a quick and agile plot, with a fast pace, in terms of the resolution of this murder, and at the same time he is going to travel to the Rota of that time, as well as to the current one.
–Does the novel reach Rota, or does the novel arrive from Rota
-From Rota comes the novel. I was very clear that I wanted to write a noir novel that would take place in Andalusia and this story, that of the Americans from the Rota base, so unknown in our country, and not only for those who live in the north, but also here, in the south, for Andalusians, I found it so seductive and interesting that I had it very clear from the beginning.
–A military base that, despite the years we have lived with it, we do not have much information about its origin, implementation or daily routine…
Yes, it is a fairly unknown story. In fact, when I had already decided that I was going to write the novel and began to document myself, the first thing that surprised me was that I found practically nothing. There are some documentaries, some references, but all very anecdotal, there is hardly anything. So I decided to go to town to see what I could find and my surprise was that I discovered a series of wonderful, wonderful people who told me everything. Practically everything that appears in the novel has been told to me by the people of the town themselves, in what we can understand as an exercise in oral narration.
-The last dove is also the pretext to talk about two very different cultures but that are in a specific point in common.
-This encounter between the two cultures took place from the first moment. Furthermore, the two cultures contaminated each other. It has always been said a lot that in Andalusia we tend to assimilate the traditions that come from outside, but in the case of the Rota base, the North Americans were also contaminated by our traditions. And if you go to town today you realize that this meeting between the two countries is something that is fully assimilated and integrated by its inhabitants. But in its time it was something very special and striking, and although they brought some good things, there are also very dark stories behind the arrival of the Americans.
-In your novel, as in life, the family is an area of ​​affection, but also of conflict.
-Indeed. Without going into the realm of crime, that is something that happens in any family. In La Última Paloma, the family, that structure that accompanies us all, is presented as that nest of support, affection and love, but also as an area full of secrets and with a past to discover that affects the present, generations later.
–Does evil live within us or are there part-time and full-time bad guys
-Evil lives inside everyone, we all have a dark side. And I think there are bad part-timers and bad full-timers. Many times we try to relate to people we consider normal and we don’t realize that these people, like us, also have a dark side. A very specific example is that of psychopaths. Literature and cinema have mythologized them a lot, always as murderers, when it is known that most psychopaths never kill and that they are people who are among us, like our boss, like our partner or like the driver of the bus, and we are interacting with them permanently.
-As in other social spheres, gender-based violence also persists in crimes.
-It’s evidence. And gender violence remains the same as in the 1950s, because unfortunately there are issues that continue to be valid. It is one of the great themes of The Last Dove, because this type of violence is normally suffered by women, and in the novel it occupies a prominent role.
-The protagonist of the novel is called Patria Santiago, why that name, she has come to stay
-I was looking for a name for the protagonist and it actually happened that the name found me. A lady showed me the border of her college and there I discovered that a classmate was called Patria, which I had never seen as a proper name, always as a common noun. I liked it so much, and not only because I think it’s phonetically beautiful, but also because of its meaning. Homeland as a proper name, but also as the place you come from, your land, your roots, and it seemed to me that giving that name to someone who has no homeland, as is the case with Patria Santiago, was very literary. He is a very special character who can be frightening at first, since he has a strange relationship with physical pain. She always carries a blade with which she self-harms and is a former boxer turned civil guard. But he is a very vulnerable person, with a very stormy past that he has not overcome. There are characters that go away very quickly, but I want to see how this novel works to embark Patria Santiago and Sacha Santos [the other protagonist] on another project.
