These stories are going to transport you far away, in a centennial journey, to countries near and far, to the coexistence of mythologies and very diverse religions, to hallucinatory states caused by drugs or unexpected mental stimuli, to the appearance of historical conflicts that are still alive, to a fusion of reality and fantasy that transcends our rational ways of living.
In one place or another, in one time or another, you will discover within these pages a naked, crude, palpitating, unsatisfied loneliness... that tries to confront itself with the achievement of a liberating sexuality. It is in this vital tension that the narrative pulse is established.
Of course, behind this subdued solitude, lies an unjust social structure, imprinted by the inexhaustible voracity of power, in the various ideological formats (from the more or less disguised dictatorships to the speculative absolutism of liberal society). The tormented protagonists of the stories shown here are victims of this global situation, with which the reader can easily identify at the beginning of the stories. Each in his or her own way, in the depths of the dead leaves, is searching for a place, although as the story unfolds, in an attempt to escape from the daily inertia, the characters usually enter into an unexpected and unusual adventure that we could not have imagined.
The liberation through an unknown and more savage sexuality, stimulates the action of these protagonists.
It is not the first time that Juan Salanova has faced, beyond fiction, in his daily practice as a teacher in Mesones de Isuela, in the early 1980s, the courageous confrontation with a regressive Spanish society in the face of a natural expression of sexuality, a hindrance to a Francoism still in force in many spheres and social customs. He tried to develop in his classes a lucid, practical sexual training, devoid of the classic censorship, too disturbing for the reactionary minds of a sector of the local families. The conflict originated in the town crossed borders, reaching a place in the multitudinous Spanish television of that time. Juan Salanova became a symbol of the path to be taken, within the educational sphere, towards a free and liberating sexuality.
These stories present the horizon of people who, in different cultural contexts and historical moments (including our country in 2015), do not manage to enjoy a harmonious, natural, full, integrated sexual life in the personal and social development they yearn for. Sex beats in them like a kind of erotic machine that needs to be refuelled periodically, if not like a sleeping, unpredictable or indomitable beast.
He encourages non-conformity in these pages, the rebellion against the society of virtual spectacle that floods us. This is because, according to what is written, it is possible to go beyond our small daily island of constrained sensuality, which is alien to shared intimacy and cooperation in solidarity with human beings and other living beings on the planet. It is possible to open our small stronghold of routine time and step-by-step renunciation to new horizons, almost without having noticed it.
Regardless of the current debate on the percentage use of the brain, the author proclaims - through the skills of his characters - that it is possible to develop our physical and mental capacities more and better (although they sometimes use psychedelic substances to achieve this). That it is possible to allow a freer, more original, satisfying and compassionate sexuality to emanate and be fulfilled. That it is possible to make a better world.
Juan Salanova has an extraordinary weapon, his imagination without frontiers as a writer, to achieve this. Thus, a certain confrontation takes place between the critically realistic and documented setting of his stories, with the irruption of dreamlike escapes and fictional elements that tend to provoke the outcome of an overflowing fantasy. All this wide universe shelters these stories, unique personal odysseys of the last century that have led us here.
