Spanish topic for N.Z. writer

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33778, 26 February 1975, Page 16

Spanish topic for N.Z. writer

A former Westport man who has achieved literary success with a best-selling novel is not likely to find many people in his home town — or anywhere else in New Zealand — able to read it. It is in Spanish.

Mr Peter Hawes, aged 27, bom and bred in Westport, returned to Christchurch this week after spending four years overseas, mostly in Spain. He gained his B.A. degree at the University of Canterbury in 1970, went to Australia and taught for six months, then to Britain where he worked at different jobs for a year while his wife taught in a secondary school in Brighton. Then they moved to Spain. While at university, Mr Hawes had studied sixteenthcentury Spanish history, a period of greatness for Spain, and became fascinated by the contrast between the Spain of that period and the Spain of today. He said that the sixteenth century for Spain was “100 years of greatness surpass-

ing anything that had happened before or since, but I have never really found out why it occurred,” Mr Hawes taught English at a private academy in Barcelona to earn a living. Academies were common in Spain as people who could afford to, avoided Government schools because they were so bad.

Mr Hawes and his wife went to Spain with the intention of learning Spanish: but found when they decided to settle in Barcelona that the people there spoke Catalan, “a different language, not a dialect as far as they are concerned.”

Nevertheless, the couple learnt Spanish and Mr Hawes wrote his book—a historical novel on the Spanish Inquisition, in which he suggests that the inquisition was a political arm of the Government.

“This would be of no great moment in most countries, but in Spain it is a very delicate subject,” said Mr Hawes.

He said Spanish schools taught that it was the English and Dutch who first asserted that the Spanish Inquisition was more cruel than that in other parts of Europe. “It was probably no more cruel, just more effective,” said Mr Hawes.

His book, "La Hoguera” (“The Fire”), appeared in Spanish bookshops in December, after being with the censor for three months. Since then, the censor has been replaced as being “too liberal.”

The book reached third place on the best-selling list in December and first place in January. The second edition was then being printed and negotiations were under way for it to be printed in other languages. Mr Hawes hopes to be able to live in Christchurch if he can obtain work. He wants to write another book on a Spanish subject, an eighteenth century topic this time, Charles the Bewitched, the last of the Hapsburg kings before the Bourbons took over.

He said there was still strict censorship in Spain. When doing publicity for his book, he had had radio interviews in which he was not only supplied with the questions he would be asked but also the answers he was to give. His book would not be printed in paperback form in Spain, as the Spanish considered paperbacks to be rubbish, said Mr Hawes. A book was a status symbol and had to be printed with a hard cover.