He is the man who has written everything in 2024. Eduard Sola (Santa Eulàlia de Ronçana, Barcelona, 35 years old) has become the fashionable scriptwriter in Spanish cinema and television. His projects have starred in the audiovisual year, although he approaches his new status with skepticism. “I would like to be in fashion,” he responds on a terrace in the Barcelona neighborhood of Sants, where he lives. Even so, his credits speak for themselves: he has signed the scripts for the films House on fire y The red virginand the series To want y Mamen Mayo (of the latter, recently released on SkyShowtime and adapting an old idea for a reality on the distribution of inheritances, it is also showrunner). “It was a coincidence. Many of these projects were written years ago, but it is true that they reflect a constant pace of work,” he responds. “When I was younger, I believed that in Spanish cinema the same people always wrote. Now I would say that there are not so many of us versatile and accomplished scriptwriters.”
Everything consists, as he maintains, in “delivering the scripts on time” and knowing when to give up before the director. “I fight things twice, and the third time, I give in. “I am aware that I am at the service of another person,” reflects Sola, bearded and loquacious. Last week, Sola received her first Goya nomination for House on firethe unexpected hit of the year in Spanish cinema, which reached 400,000 spectators and grossed almost three million euros. In the Feroz awards it has three nominations: for this comedy about a bourgeois and down-and-out family, but also for The red virgin y To want. Before I had written projects as diverse as Maria (and the others)the series I know who you are or the movies through my window for Netflix.
Sola defines himself as an artisan, “a carpenter” dedicated to writing stories who resists the general tendency “to buy at Ikea.” In that analogy, what would the wood be? “The emotions.” And not the words? “A script is not just the dialogues. “Words are just a channel.” To Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, director of To wanthis curiosity convinced him when he was casting scriptwriters to co-write his series about abuse within a wealthy family in Bilbao. “He came with more questions than I had,” he confesses in an audio. The interested party laughs: “If I don’t have those doubts, I don’t find it stimulating, although sometimes I also work just for money.” For his part, Dani de la Orden, director of House on fire and a close friend since they studied film together, appreciates his ability to adapt. “Just look at his filmography, his films are very variable,” he says in a text message.
At the expense, perhaps, of an obvious authorial mark? “I am not Rafael Azcona, but I feel represented in everything I have done. There was a time when that variety bothered me. I looked at my filmography and didn’t see a unit. Each project seemed like his father and mother’s,” he admits. “It took me a while to understand that I was looking at the wrong references. “I should not compare myself with the absolute coherence of Paul Laverty or Charlie Kaufman, but with David Koepp or Jorge Guerricaechevarría.” The first one wrote Jurassic Parkas well as Death suits you so well. And the second, the films of Álex de la Iglesia, but also tremulous flesh o The laws of the border. “In Europe there is the tradition of the director-screenwriter, and authorship has been consolidated on that precept, although I think the current industry is asking for something else,” he adds.
“I have great admiration for my parents. They fought so that I could read Chekhov. The paradox of their sacrifices is that it has created a distance between us.”
In reality, there is a distracting coherence in what he does. As a whole, Sola’s filmography reflects a deep interest in family relationships, in all their grays and chiaroscuros. For the almost invisible nuances that separate parents from children, or those that separate siblings raised in the same roof, even though they seem antithetical. For love tinged with soft resentment, and vice versa. “When my mother comes home, I love receiving her, but she can also irritate me with her comments. “That is what my point of view is based on.” That’s what he tried to convey in House on fire: all the characters are “pitiable”, but it is impossible not to love them. “That’s why we leave the cinema believing that we have seen our mothers, our friends and ourselves,” he says.
At the end of House on fireSola dedicates the project to her parents, “always a role model.” “My family is the complete opposite of the one in the movie. I come from a culturally low class, I am proudly Charnego,” says Sola, son of Catalans of Andalusian descent (the accent they often put in the surname to Catalanize it is incorrect), with a father who is a pharmacy assistant and a pastry chef mother, both born and raised on the outskirts of Vallès, which he describes as “small ghettos, small Andalusias”. “My parents, who spoke Spanish, decided to speak to me in Catalan to facilitate my social advancement. I feel that there is something of historical reparation in that today I am a valid cultural agent.”
He says it and gets a little emotional. When he studied with a scholarship at the prestigious ESCAC, which produced Juan Antonio Bayona, Kike Maíllo and Mar Coll, he did not always feel comfortable with those origins. “Being the first university student in my family, I felt like an alien. On Christmas Eve I wanted to talk about Chekhov, I felt like I didn’t belong in his universe,” he recalls. “Now, the idea of a family where everyone reads Chekhov seems like shit to me like a piano. I have great admiration for my parents. They fought so that I could read Chekhov. The paradox of their sacrifices is that it has created a distance between us, which is exactly what a father or mother would never want.” These days he often thinks about his grandfather, who died 10 years ago and could not read or write. “When this light arrives, you feel a kind of reparation or even revenge, although the word is somewhat violent. But a little violence isn’t bad either…”
In what he writes there is usually a kind of psychoanalytic secret, an original pain never resolved. It is detected in the cracks of the tarambana son of House on firein the strange relationship of maternal-filial domination of The red virginin the distance between the brothers of To wantso close and so far. “I guess it’s the fragility we all share. The older I get, the redder I become, but I think I could even understand the pain of a facha if he told me about his childhood,” he answers. “Actually, I don’t know much about Freud. Despite her supposed ignorance, my mother has great emotional intelligence. “I have inherited from her a certain reading of feelings.”
The success of their projects has alleviated the visibility deficit that their union usually laments. “They call us crybabies, but if we ask for more spotlights it is because we live in humiliating situations. For example, being denied entry to a premiere on the red carpet, while even the extras parade along it,” he complains. Still, he feels comfortable operating in the shadows. “The good thing about anonymity is that you don’t get the compliments, but you don’t get the shit either. I would be hypocritical if I said that this attention is not pleasant, but I know that it is temporary. Soon I will return to working quietly at home and will continue writing to pay the mortgage. All this will be a flower of a day,” concludes Sola. We couldn’t disagree more.