Writer Toti Martínez de Lezea debuted as a novelist in 1998 with La calle de la judería (The Jewish Street), followed by other novels that have placed her among the essential authors of historical novels in the Spanish and Basque languages, such as La abadesa (The Abbess), La herbolera (The Herbalist) or La sombra del temple (The Shadow of the Temple).

Her most recent book, Voces de Sefarad (Voices from Sefarad), collects various stories about Sephardic women in medieval Spain, one of them set in the Jewish quarter of Estella, Navarra. She presented it in the framework of the III Sefarad Conference, entitled, “Sefarad imagined and represented (female literature and documentary film).” The Creativity and Cultural Heritage project of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) at the University of Navarra organized the event.

How has literature treated Sephardi peoples? Has it helped us better understand that part of our past or somehow broken down stereotypes?
There is very little literature on Sephardim, really close to nothing at all. Of course, there are books about European Jews, and more specifically their twentieth-century experience. It suffices to read Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and study the character of Shylock to see the prejudices that existed against Jews in the past. I cannot much answer the second question, I would like to think so, but it is difficult to break subconscious stereotypes, and even less likely to do so with novels given low reading rates.

And what about the prejudices of today? Anti-Semitism is growing in Europe ... Can bringing the Jewish past to society through literature help combat it?
Unfortunately, you are right. Anti-Semitism takes hold every so often based, now as before, with clichés that are far removed from reality. I do not believe that literature is a weapon; rather, it can be a medium, another view. The Sephardi people are part of our past, of our history, but there are still people who identify them with curved-nose usurers, when in fact the vast majority were neither wealthy nor lenders; Jewish Europeans were artisans, merchants, doctors, poets, farmers and poor people, like the rest of the population.

In the book youpresented, Voces de Sefarad, the protagonists are women. What is the common thread among the women you portray?
In general, there is little proper documentation of medieval, Christian, Jewish or Muslim women, unless they were queens, saints and a few others, so my stories are totally imagined. However, I take advantage of records from every historical period in which I place my narrations— including customs, laws, habitat, religion, and whatever else is known about it, to some how commemorate each period. They share what most women of any creed share, namely the desire to persist in hostile societies full of prejudices, in which it was very difficult to have a personality of their own.

In your novels, you depict brave female characters, who sometimes challenge the society in which they live ... what do they teach women of today?
Well, not all of my female characters are brave; there are also cowards, submissive women, evil mothers and even a couple of murderers, but yes, there are several very strong women. It is not about teaching, but rather about showing a reality, about remembering that, just as today and despite being practically absent from history, women throughout the ages have struggled to survive, to raise their sons and daughters, to fulfill their dreams and leave a legacy for generations to come.

Many of your stories are set at the end of the Middle Ages. What do you wish to emphasize in terms of this historical period?
That it is fascinating to me and that, despite the great plagues, endless wars, andweather conditions that caused death and misery, it was also a time of invention, such as the printing press, glasses, etc. Indeed, it was a time of commercial exchange and discovery of distant countries, creation of public libraries and consolidation of universities, as well as of magnificent painters, musicians, sculptors and builders who established the bases that later Renaissance artists picked up on, to mention only a few aspects of that period.

How do you manage to put yourself in the shoes of characters with values ​​and references so far removed from the contemporary period?
I have read, and I read, many intellectual essays and articles from specialized magazines of all kinds, I visit places, museums ... It is not enough to imagine a plot; the characters and the facts must be credible, have specific characteristics depending on the times and places where the action takes place; they have to work, talk, act, eat, give birth, die... My characters are usually ordinary people with no paper trail, but I have access to information about laws, judgments, contracts, and mentions that help me recreate that moment. On the other hand, human beings have not changed much; our hopes, ambitions and fears are the same now as in other centuries. The rest is hypothesis and imagination.

As a prominent author of historical novels, can you explain the reason for this genre’s upsurge? Why do readers from different generations connect so well with the past?
I suppose it is due to the desire to know where we come from, and not everyone can digest a more academic text. In my case, my father was a voracious reader of historical essays and I became interested in history from a very young age. When I wrote my first novel, another genre did not occur to me because I enjoy this one the most, which also happens to be the most used in universal literature. However, under the heading of "historical novel," there are numerous works that either have nothing to do with history or that are hardly literature. It is not about making a king or a pope, conqueror or saint speak, but about creating a literary argument; and, on the other hand, authors must limit themselves to credible plots, not invent the implausible to make the story beautiful. To write a novel that takes place in a past that the author has never experienced, he or she must document thoroughly, and take into account that readers of this genre are much more critical and demanding than of any other.