Catalan writer and her Yorkshire tale

May 13 2008 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

GETTING a first novel published at the age of 80 is an achievement in itself.

But for Marta Cardona, the achievement is all the more remarkable because her story, Spanish Rose, Yorkshire Thorns, is written in English and not her native Catalan.

The book has been many years in the making and is heavily autobiographical, telling the tale of a young Spanish woman who leaves Franco’s Spain for a new life in the much colder climes of Yorkshire.

Marta herself was in her 20s when she first came to England, working as a nanny in London to improve her English and earn enough money to continue her art studies in Barcelona.

“At that time young girls weren’t travelling around the world and I had to wait until I was 25 and didn’t need my father’s permission,’’ she explained.

When she returned to England, to work as a live-in servant with her husband, it was as the newly-wed Marta Herrero.

Spanish Rose, Yorkshire Thorns is an emotional story of hardship and heartbreak.

Set in the 1950s and 60s, it covers a 10-year period, during which the heroine gives birth to five children and continually battles to keep her family solvent while the feckless and selfish husband squanders their money.

Marta, who now lives in Waterloo, Huddersfield, says the story is true in all but the names of the characters and the fact that the heroine plays the mandolin, whereas she is an artist. “In fact it is my sister who plays the mandolin,’’ she says.

The novel recalls the frustration and despair felt by the younger Marta as she realises that she will have to raise her children without the help of their father – and has married someone who is more interested in cars and his own pleasures.

It is full of the young Marta’s observations on British culture and how homesick she often felt.

“It is all my experiences. I could have cried myself while writing it,’’ she says.

Originally, Marta, who is a former adult education art teacher, intended to write this part of her life story, leading up to the separation from her husband (who returned to Spain), so that her children could read it.

“I wrote it down some years ago in Catalan and put it away. Then I went to creative writing classes and I promised the teacher that I would finish it – I was writing another one, in English, but I needed better English.

“My English is not perfect and I’m not an English writer, I’m a Catalan writer who is writing in English. The book has had some editing but I didn’t want to change too much because it has a certain poetry,’’ said Marta.

After completing the book, Marta had a few copies bound for her children and six grandchildren and then decided to approach a publisher.

She found a Huddersfield publisher, Jeremy Mills, prepared to print Spanish Rose, English Thorns, in paperback and is now considering whether to complete the Catalan version and look for a publisher in Barcelona.

Marta, who studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Barcelona, is more used to displaying art work than books, but will be seeing her books on sale in Waterstone’s in Kingsgate, with a front cover taken from her original paintings.

She’ll be signing copies of Spanish Rose, Yorkshire Thorns, (£9.99), at Lindley Library Garden on May 16 at 3pm, and again at Waterstones in Kingsgate on May 17 at 12pm.