How living in Spain influenced my writing.
There are two questions I am often asked; one is whether living in Spain has influenced my writing and the other is, how much of my own life is in my stories. I will attempt to answer both those questions in this blog.
In fact when I moved to southern Spain in 1998 it was to be near my daughter who had decided to move to Malaga when she finished college. What had initially been intended as a brief stay on my part, had turned into becoming my home from then on. At that time I knew very little about the country or its history, but I soon became captivated by both. My two great loves are literature and history, and here I found I could indulge both of these passions.
The first historical novel I wrote was related to recent Spanish history and it evolved from a collection of interviews I made with Spanish women of different ages, where I learnt about their lives during the Spanish Civil War and afterwards. These interviews gave me the inspiration to write a love story set in Málaga during that civil war (Spanish Lavender) and also a novel entitled The House on the Beach which was about two girls struggling against the post-war restrictions imposed by both the State and the Church during the dictatorship of Franco. Neither of which I could have done adequately if I had not been living here. A lot of my writing looks at social class and inequality, particularly the position of women in Spain, but there is another aspect of Spanish history that intrigues me as well, the Muslim—or Moorish as it was called at the time—occupation of Spain.
Anyone visiting the autonomous community of Andalusia in the south of Spain, cannot help but come across reminders of the Muslim inhabitants of the land they occupied for almost 800 years, be it its magnificent buildings such as the Alhambra in Granada and the Mosque in Córdoba, or the traditional designs of colourful wall tiles, Arabic archways, the Arabic words that are part of everyday use, irrigation systems; the land is full of reminders of what the Muslims left behind.
It was in 2000 that I first became fascinated by these Muslim conquerors and their influence on Spain and its culture. I had visited an exhibition of Moorish art in the ruined city of Madinat-al-Zahra, near Córdoba and what I learned there inspired me to write a historical novel telling the story of how the caliph Abd al Rahman III had built the city in the 10th century as a symbol to the world of his wealth and power. This was the Golden Age of Moorish Spain and at the time al-Andalus was renowned throughout the civilised world for its learning and culture. Once the caliph died, it was not many years before the city fell into disrepair and was forgotten. The more I read about the history of the period, the more surprised I became to learn just how much Spain and the rest of the western world owed to the Muslims of the 10th century and the more I wanted to write about it and share it with others. So what was originally going to be a single historical novel, The Shining City, turned into three novels, with The Eye of the Falcon and The Ring of Flames completing The al-Andalus trilogy.
The demise of Córdoba, after a terrible prolonged siege and the deaths of many citizens, led to what had once been the most cultured and wealthy city in al-Andalus being abandoned and the royal court being transferred to Málaga. As a resident of Málaga, I felt duty bound to continue my research into Muslim Spain and wrote a second trilogy set in Málaga during the succeeding century. I called this one The City of Dreams Trilogy because my characters, both real and fictitious, were moving there to fulfil their dreams and escape from war-torn Córdoba.
So far, I haven’t explained how much of my own life lies in my stories. The answer is both nothing and everything. I expect I am no different from many other writers, in that I am by nature, an observant person. A writer needs to notice details, mannerisms, behaviours, colours. As we go through life we all absorb ideas, events, emotions that are in some small way unique to us, without even realising it. For a writer this is like having a large compendium of characters, places, conversations and events that you can dip into at any time. And that is exactly what I do. When writing historical fiction for example, it is important to create a balance between the characters that you have researched and know existed and those that you have invented. This is when a writer relies on their personal compendium of experiences to bring their fictitious characters to life, while not turning them into a photofit of someone you already know. They are like prompts for the writer, an extra cherry in the pie, a drop more icing on the cake. They are a mosaic of details that have been unconsciously collected during my life and they are available when I need them.
They say that a writer should write about what they know and to a certain extent I agree with that. Of course in the realms of story telling, be it historical fiction or science fiction, we must sometimes cut loose from what we know to be certain and true facts, and let our imaginations take over. The real joy of writing fiction is that the writer can create their own world, with characters that do not really exist, but whom the reader may feel that they recognise and often can empathise with them.
It’s probably easier to see how Spain has influenced my historical fiction, but its influence is also very evident in some of my contemporary works as well. Recently, when I set about creating my female private detective, I decided to set the action in the centre of Málaga because that is somewhere I know well and can readily bring it to mind while I am writing. It also provides a range of backgrounds to my stories, a place where I can set the action in the pageantry of Holy Week, or the excitement of the annual Feria. It’s what all writers do. If you are a fan of the Rebus detective series, you will by now be fairly familiar with Edinburgh, a city that the author Ian Rankin obviously knows very well. Centuries ago, Thomas Hardy lived and wrote in Dorset and his books are set in Wessex, a place he knew and loved well, and which his readers have grown to recognise.
By and large, writers are eclectic people, who use a mix of their personal store of experiences and creative skills to enhance what they are writing and bring their readers into their world to share them.
