Four elderly women living in 2045 build a time machine and, as a final journey together, travel back to Madrid in 1985. There they face again decisions already made, past loves, and dances to the rhythm of the Movida.
In this making-of Inés Galiano explains how she wrote Las chicas de ayer (Runas).
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Since childhood I have been fascinated by time-travel stories: I imagined the infinite possibilities a time machine would unlock and the consequences it would have on the choices we make. How many times have I thought: “If I could go back and do it better (or at least differently)…!” Almost as many as I have tried to imagine how we will be in the future.
Under that premise, in
Las chicas de ayer
, Marie, a retired scientist living in the future, builds a means of transportation that allows travel to another decade. Tempted by nostalgia and memories of her youth, she invites her seventy-seven-year-old friends to go back with her to Sting’s concert in Madrid in 1985. Thus begins an adventure in the style of
Back to the Future or
Groundhog Day, but starring four elderly women in the Madrid scene.
This novel has also allowed me to return to this era, which in the collective imagination is associated with rebellion, teased hair, and rock music. I made a small concession, because it’s a period I did not personally experience (I was born in 1992), but I believe nostalgia is a feeling that is inherited. My parents lived their youth in those years, which influenced my childhood: I remember choreographing “Dancing” for hours with my cousin, including Rubí’s songs in my personal cassette in the car, and listening to the anecdotes of that time while we looked through the family photo album, full of colorful blouses with shoulder pads. And after seeing the success of the series Stranger Things, I think I’m not the only one who has inherited that eighties nostalgia.
However, when I was writing this story and wandered through that sea of documentation, newspaper archives, and RTVE relics, I was clear that I did not want to go to the extreme of romantically idealizing the decade. I wanted to reproduce the differences between nostalgic people and those more focused on the future through the four protagonists’ different viewpoints: while Marie represents those who would like to relive their memories over and over, Cati is very comfortable with the technological advances of 2045 (the year in which the novel begins), Patricia is aware of the historical shifts, and finally, Isabel’s character is a grumpy old woman who complains about the dangers of going back in time.
Moreover, Isa is the only member of the group who has not given in to cosmetic treatments and who wants to be old, because to be old means having lived. Readers tell me they can’t find more stories with older female characters, and the truth is that they aren’t written. It seems that women, after a certain age, disappear, as if they had nothing left to say. Nothing could be further from the truth.
With this concern in mind, I wanted to describe a group of elderly women who have spent their entire lives being friends and sharing anecdotes. Building their worldview and the dynamics among them helped me assert their role, the pressures they face to hide their age, and to denounce their invisibility.
This premise also allowed me to imagine the future with my own group of friends, with whom I hope to keep traveling and sharing life at seventy-seven, to the rhythm of eighties music or whatever we choose.
Las chicas de ayer talks about the 80s, aging, and friendship, but it is also a tale of time paradoxes. Although the focus is on friendship, it was important to design a plausible time-travel journey for readers and, without a doubt, it was the element that gave me the most headaches. Here I must highlight the invaluable support of my editor (even if she doesn’t like to be mentioned), who since the first meeting pulled out a giant chalkboard to connect the dots of each jump along the timeline.
Crafting a credible time-travel journey was one of the greatest challenges in writing this story, but I am convinced we found the perfect pieces to make the puzzle fit. And just as good translations must be flawless to go unnoticed and let the reader enjoy the story, our time paradox had to be airtight so that readers can focus on the journey of these four friends to the era of their memories of youth.
Writing this story has meant confronting the nostalgia of times past while facing my own fears about the future and old age. But above all, it is a tribute to friendship.
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Author: Inés Galiano. Title: Las chicas de ayer. Publisher: Runas. Availability: All Your Books.