Pérez-Reverte "reconciles himself with Spain" with Alatriste and 'Mission in Paris'

Fourteen years after the last installment of the adventures of Captain Alatriste ( The Bridge of Assassins, 2011), the writer Arturo Pérez–Reverte recovers in a new novel, Mission in Paris , this iconic fictional character from the Spanish Golden Age, which makes him "reconcile with Spain."

" There's something fun and very Spanish about this , and that is that he's a character who is equally repulsed by the extremes: the far left for the imperialist regime, Spain, and the flag; and the far right for the Inquisition and the Black Legend," the author explained during the presentation of the work.

The novel arrives with a first edition of 180,000 copies , the eighth installment in a series that has sold more than seven million books and has made the leap into the audiovisual and comic book worlds.

According to Pérez-Reverte, Captain Alatriste is a character full of light and shadows who symbolizes "the best and the worst" of being Spanish. "He's a dark man, who has lost his faith and knows that the Spain he serves is going to hell, but he remains loyal to it because it's his way of seeing life."

The writer and member of the Royal Spanish Academy has brought the comparison to the present day. "We're screwed, deceived, manipulated, but when a disaster (a catastrophic storm) or a fire occurs, there's always a Spaniard who grabs their hose, shovel, or syringe and goes there. That's the good thing we have, and that's Alatriste," he said.

"Recognizing the darkness, the shadow, the tragedy, the deception, the lies, and the corruption, there are always people capable of crossing the gap ," he added, convinced that "a pure-hearted hero is impossible today" because "we are no longer innocent."

"The hero can be an ordinary guy, a scoundrel whose life puts him in a situation and he does what he has to do," he commented.

Although fourteen years have passed since the previous book – and 30 since the series began – the plot of Mission to Paris takes place just one year later.

The author of Le Club Dumas (1993) pays homage to The Three Musketeers by the Frenchman Alexandre Dumas by having the Spanish soldier and swordsman and his pupil Íñigo Balboa cross paths with D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and the fearsome Cardinal Richelieu in the historical context of the siege of La Rochelle (1627–1628).

Pérez-Reverte acknowledged that his own actual aging has "contaminated" the character , who is often plagued in this plot by remorse, memories of the past he is not proud of.

"It happens to me during my time as a reporter; I'm plagued by thoughts about what I should or shouldn't have done," he said. " Alatriste benefits from my own remorse ."

Asked about where Alatriste would fit into today's world, the Spanish writer noted that what he seeks is to explain the past in order to understand the present .

"He is an adventurous character. I do not intend to draw ideological lines. I want the reader to understand the painful lucidity , the bitter adventure, the sad and wonderful, the dirty and luminous, the sterile and fertile history of Spain."

In this regard, he recalled that the idea for the first novel in the series, published in 1996, came from reading a textbook belonging to his daughter, who was twelve years old at the time, that the Spanish Golden Age, "the most important," could be summed up "in four lines and clichés."

"Very under-represented" in the theater until the beginning of the 20th century, Pérez-Reverte believes that the Franco dictatorship "appropriated" the "glorious" part of that era , when Spain was "the great world power." And that led to the mistake of marginalizing it, he said, even in a democracy.

"We are still paying for that mistake today," he added, referring to the fact that the right and the far right have "inherited the word Spain" because the left "renounced" it.