On Andrea Víctrix, by Llorenç Villaronga

Louise Johnson in conversation with Jorge Gárriz about the novel Andrea Víctrix written by Llorenç Villalonga

Llorenç Villalonga (Palma de Mallorca, 1897-1980) was an important exponent of Majorcan narrative in the 20th century. Coming from a family of rural landowners, he studied medicine and began to publish articles in 1924. His first novel, Mort de dama (1931), courted controversy, though Bearn o la sala de les nines (1956 Spanish, 1961 Catalan) is perhaps his best-known work. Andrea Víctrix is considered to be his most ambitious novel. He died at home after a long illness.

Andrea Víctrix is wakeful and on edge, I could see only the negative in this era. We were living in the realm of the fake. Man was subjected to the continuous pressure of advertising which dictated what he could do and what he should think. With every day that went by, we found it more difficult to form an opinion of our own. The possibility of freedom could be glimpsed only occasionally when advertising campaigns contradicted each other, but this also raised the spectre of a descent into chaos. We were being poisoned by words and there was no way back.

Part socio-political essay, part dystopian fiction, Andrea Víctrix presents a shockingly prescient vision of Palma, Mallorca in 2050. In comparing the anonymous narrator’s ‘traditional’ 1960s values with a future society that has done away with family and gender, Villalonga sets up an intriguing interplay between the narrator and the androgynous Andrea Víctrix, so-called Director of Pleasure, in a powerfully satirical, sometimes ironic exploration of contemporary issues such as gender and sexuality, consumerism, environmental disaster and the politics of big business.

Dr. Louise Johnson is the translator of the novel from Catalan into English. Louise Johnson was an undergraduate and postgraduate at St John's College, University of Oxford, and College Lecturer at Keble College, before joining the Department of Hispanic Studies at Sheffield in January 1996. Within the now School of Languages and Cultures, Louise is Director of Catalan Studies, and teaches Catalan and Spanish language, literature, culture, and Translation Studies at undergraduate level, and contributes to taught postgraduate modules, as well as supervising research students in the areas of Catalan and Iberian Studies, with a particularly focus on literature. Louise is also currently Faculty of Arts and Humanities Assistant Director of Research and Innovation with responsibility for Postgraduate Affairs.

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