Whenever Javier Cercas (b. 1962, Ibahernando, Spain) is mentioned, the word autofiction comes up—a concept that has been thoroughly discussed in literary theory. Certainly, since the publication of Cercas’s novel Soldados de Salamina in 2001 (Eng. Soldiers of Salamis, 2003), autofiction has become an increasingly common narrative resource. Writers hoping to spin any old autobiographical matter into great literature have exhausted this resource in many novels. However, beyond autofiction, several of Cercas’s novels are grounded in topics that transcend personal experience, such as the Spanish Civil War, with all its atrocities and implications. 

Against this backdrop, Cercas, the character, appears in his books. The boundary between fiction and history, what’s real and imaginary, blurs, creating spaces for reflection and giving way to narratives that delve into historical memory by way of personal crises. Cercas thus creates frescoes of Spain’s memories. Their traces are present, like open wounds, inviting us to reflect. His most recent book, El loco de Dios en el fin del mundo (God’s madman at the end of the world), published in 2025, lauded by critics and readers alike, is a portrayal of Pope Francis I. 

Alonso Rabí: Can we start by recalling your history as a reader of the Latin American boom?

Javier Cercas: When I was fifteen, I started going to bookstores, looking for books. I didn’t buy any unless they were by boom authors: Borges, Vargas Llosa, García Márquez, Cortázar, Cabrera Infante, Carpentier, et al. When I was fifteen years old, that’s what I started reading. Because of those authors, I didn’t become a Spanish writer. I became a writer in Spanish. I can say that my tradition isn’t Cervantes or Quevedo; it’s the Spanish-language tradition, which is much broader.

Rabí: It’s an interesting nuance: a writer “in Spanish.”

Cercas: It’s what I am. Borges isn’t Argentine and Vargas Llosa isn’t Peruvian. They’re part of my tradition. And I believe writers have two traditions. One in your own language, and another that’s universal, where you connect with the rest of the world. But what I feel about my tradition, in my language, is largely thanks to the boom, because it was a sort of university for writers. And back when I started reading them, Spanish writers were much less important. And we can’t forget, I’d add, that the Latin American authors who were getting noticed completely turned literature on its head. For the first time since Cervantes, fiction in Spanish became relevant in the world and Western canon. Nothing that big has happened since, and it may never happen again. 

What I feel about my tradition, in my language, is largely thanks to the boom, because it was a sort of university for writers.

Rabí: Vargas Llosa talked about the function of the Latin American writer in a 1967 speech titled “La literatura es fuego” (Literature is fire). Do you share his thoughts in that talk?

Cercas: One hundred percent. It’s one of the most important texts Vargas Llosa wrote. Literature is subversive, novels are subversive. They’re a counterweight, they’re dangerous, and they unnerve power. That’s what novels do. A novel that doesn’t do that can’t be a great novel. Literature isn’t just a game; or it is, but it’s a game in which you put everything on the table. Literature is dynamite. 

Rabí: The Spanish Civil War is a frequent element in your fiction, similar to the military dictatorship for some Argentine writers, such as Mariana Enríquez, for example. 

Cercas: The civil war is present in my books. Not as part of the past but as part of the present.

Rabí: Wounds that haven’t healed?

Cercas: The past is never completely resolved. The civil war ended in 1939, according to history books, but for me it ended in 1975 with Franco’s death and in 1978 when a new constitution was created. Its definitive end was in 1981, with Tejero’s coup attempt. It didn’t last thirty-six years. It lasted forty-three years. We shouldn’t forget that Franco’s dictatorship was a continuation of the war but by other means. So, we can say that the war ended with democracy, but at the same time, it didn’t end, because the past doesn’t die. It’s always present.

Rabí: This is what your books are about.

Cercas: Exactly, like in Soldados de Salamina, for example, the past remains. The present, without a past, is mutilated. So, returning to the civil war constitutes a beginning to the present. When I was young, I thought Spain was the only country that hadn’t digested its past. Later, I realized that wasn’t true because no country can do that.

Rabí: You recently published El loco de Dios en el fin del mundo (2025), a book about Pope Francis. What’s behind this project? Have you tempered your atheism?

Cercas: My atheism has not abated in the least. I am still as atheist and anticlerical as ever, if not more. What has happened is what happens every time you finish writing a book. There’s a change in how you see things. A book is like an adventure, right? The proof of a book is that it creates a change in you. I mean, beyond entertainment or pleasure, literature is also knowledge. What I can say is that after this book, I’ve found better ways of being anticlerical (laughs). Even Francis was anticlerical, in a broad sense, much broader than mine, which originated in the campus courtyard (laughs).

Literature isn’t just a game; or it is, but it’s a game in which you put everything on the table. Literature is dynamite.

Rabí: In your Real Academia induction talk in 2024, you said: “When someone tells me they don’t like to read, I feel like I should give them my condolences.”

Cercas: Thinking that people read more in the past than they do now is incorrect. The number of readers today is higher than ever before. What’s happening is a very visible scaling back of the humanities, but we—writers, historians, academics—are to blame. We haven’t been able to demonstrate the humanities’ usefulness. We haven’t figured out how to fight the idea that literature is as useless as collecting stamps. I wonder about the works of some authors, because Cervantes isn’t as useless as collecting stamps. Neither are Shakespeare, Homer, Dickens, and Kafka. 

So, if we say these idiotic things, if we write trivial works disguised as avant-garde literature, it’s normal that people would distance themselves and not read it. But history, philology, and literature aren’t trivial. On the contrary, they’ve made the world better. Literature truly changes people. This other literature that’s just for fun, that’s not worth anything. 

Rabí: Power likes that kind of literature.

Cercas: Yes, though it sometimes pretends to be tolerant, power is so unnerved by good literature, good art in general, that’s pointed and critical. And if we can’t write literature that’s important, then we’re to blame.

Rabí: Vargas Llosa talks about escribidores and you talk about escribanos. Are they related?

Cercas: Yes, they’re in the same family of banal writers (laughs). They’re precisely the kind of writers who say that literature is like stamp collecting (no offense to stamp collecting). 

Rabí: In a certain sense, we could talk about a dispute between novelists and historians.

Cercas: They’re two different orders. Bad historians think that novelists are competing with them. I’d say that novelists approach history in a way that’s complementary. What Stendhal or Tolstoy give you in terms of history within a novel isn’t even remotely similar to what you get in a history class. For now, I’d say that literature and history are two autonomous forms of knowledge, certainly, but they can intersect with each other.

I’d say that literature and history are two autonomous forms of knowledge, certainly, but they can intersect with each other.

Rabí: In an interview, you mentioned something that intrigued me—that in literature there are no major or minor genres. That literature isn’t an elite art.

Cercas: There’s literature that’s more difficult and less difficult. I’d never recommend Luis de Góngora’s Soledades as if it were a widely popular text, or James Joyce’s Ulysses, which is also not a widely popular text.

Nonetheless, Don Quixote is. It’s an extraordinarily popular book and I’d recommend it to anybody. Along with Kafka, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Victor Hugo. What I’m saying is that literature that becomes popular doesn’t have to be bad literature. Identifying “popular” with excellent literature and “difficult” with low-quality literature is stupid. I like the popularity of literature, and I believe that “literature for the literati” is the worst in the world. It’s the most pestilent and snobby. 

Rabí: You mentioned Don Quixote de La Mancha, a book I’m very fond of because I associate it with those first experiences of reading between childhood and adolescence, with being dazzled by a character. It’s easy to feel like Don Quixote, but there’s something about Sancho as well. Do you prefer one or the other? Do you feel more like Don Quixote than Sancho, or the other way around?

Cercas: Both of them. Deep down I think it’s hard to see them as separate people. They’re one person. What counts is their friendship, which is masterfully represented and one of the wonders of the book. Don Quixote and Sancho by themselves are nothing. And you said it well, because it is a dear book. How many times have we asked ourselves what Don Quixote would say about a given situation? And I assure you that immediately after, we would ask what Sancho would say. And the end of the book, not to give it away here, is the best ending I’ve ever read in my life, hands down.

The end of Don Quixote, not to give it away here, is the best ending I’ve ever read in my life, hands down.

Rabí: Is there a moment in life when you know or decide that you’re going to be a writer? 

Cercas: Potentially. It depends on the writer. There are no rules. And in my case, literature comes at the exact moment I lost faith in God, in the summer when I was fourteen. From then on, literature, for me, replaced religion. I went to literature in search of certainty, truth, peace, and the answers that, until that point, religion had provided. And that was wrong because literature doesn’t give you answers, it just gives you more questions, but when I discovered it, it was too late.

Rabí: Somewhere you mentioned that you had lost friends over politics. What about over literature?

Cercas: Man, tons more (laughter). I have a sort of friendship with John Banville, the Irish writer. When I go to Ireland, I visit him and whatnot. He’s a very sarcastic man, with a great sense of humor. In a recent interview, I read something he said, and I think he’s right: friendship is an illusion of youth. That’s my interpretation of what he said because if I translate it literally, it would be “friendship doesn’t exist.” I used to believe in friendship, but now I believe in it less. I have great relationships with many people, but what I used to believe about friendship isn’t the real thing. I had an idealized understanding of friendship. 

Rabí: Absolute, unconditional . . .

Cercas: Yes, of course, and I’ve seen that not be the case. And I’ve realized that it was really naïve of me to think that way. On the other hand, the relationship I have with my son, yes, it’s unconditional. Or with my wife. Or my sisters. If a mother must decide between herself and her child, she picks her child. These kinds of attachments are in another dimension, and, sadly, that doesn’t happen with friendships.