Manuel, who calls himself Fabrizio, who calls himself Marta, and who is one of the key characters in the plot of Los Escorpiones, blurts out to the female protagonist, who is named after the author of the novel, Sara: “You and "I'm not that kind of people who are fine." In the description and investigation of spiritual or psychic discomfort – what is referred to as the “technocracy of the psyche” – are found the most accurate and dazzling pages that could justify part of the commotion that has aroused the very extensive and ambitious novel of novels by Sara Barquinero (Zaragoza, 1994).
Its characters – mainly Sara and Thomas, the protagonists who function as a common thread throughout the different books or screens that are overcome – have lost any principle of reality. In fact, what it is about is guessing the origin of anhedonia and Angst that prevents them from enjoying pleasure or any form of vitality if they do not resort to joints, cocaine or other stronger drugs or Orfidal. Most of the time suicide seems like the only possible way out.
Barquinero has a doctorate in Philosophy and, among other recognitions, has received the Universal Values Essay Award from the Unir Foundation. In 2021 she published the novel I will be alone and without a party. The presence of the thought and theories of philosophical authors from different eras constitutes the most solid foundation on which the entire cathedral-like construction of Los Escorpiones stands, although the author's knowledge of music, biology, the Internet, narcotics, fashion and academic intrigue.
If we insist on presenting the novel as an emblem and space for recognition of an entire generation, the so-called Z, it is because it includes spaces and a language typical of a tribe or of initiates who grew up under the constant influence of video games and the invasive advertising of brands, and who saw how the world stopped almost completely due to covid when they reached what they had announced as the best years of their lives. They find it hard to believe that the future has any possibility. Without a doubt, the book consolidates the aesthetic and cultural universe of a generation based on eternal discomforts that each era has dealt with as best it could.
Thus, between panic attacks and insomnia, when the only thing that can be done is take drugs and hide, the two protagonists become involved in a delirious investigation into the Great Conspiracy promoted by a secret society or a powerful multinational company descended from a club. Masonic knights, The Scorpions. Something similar to what happens in the successful book The Empire of Pain, the D'Alessandro family dominates entertainment venues, residences for neurological diseases, pharmaceutical laboratories, slot machine and video game factories, art galleries and audiovisual production companies. From all these platforms, the clan manipulates the present and future behavior of humanity to obtain an endless clientele of consumers of anxiolytics, antidepressants or sleeping pills.
The trail of the conspiracy over the centuries is illustrated with an Italian novel written a few years before the rise of Mussolini, with a testimonial text about the nightclubs of the late seventies in New Orleans and with the recovery of forum chats suicides on the Deep Web. There are the cities of Barcelona, Madrid and Bilbao of the present and the very near future. For people who doubt between reality and fiction and wonder which of the two has greater consistency, the author has worked hard to demonstrate that it is possible to build a parallel and perceptible reality from literature, in the same way that it is built a digital virtual reality. The novel began to take shape in 2016, while Barquinero was still at university. She claims it could have 500 more pages. Like Borges' character who wanted to include absolutely everything on a map, Los Escorpiones also runs the risk of collecting too much information.
In the overwhelming exercise that reading the novel can sometimes result in – an effect of which the author and editor are probably aware – those who read from their own, uncertain and incomplete reality, find themselves faced with a development not exempt from exhibitionism. At the end of the day, these are people who do not know what to do with their existence, but have assumed that they are symbols of themselves and need to imagine, perceive, feel and shout what is behind an emblem.
Sara Barquinero Los Escorpiones Lumen 816 pages 22.71 euros
