Poetics of Self-Destruction (Poética de la autodestrucción)

Miguel grows up in a small town in Granada where family violence, precarity, and silence shape the passage into adulthood. Too sensitive for that environment, he takes refuge in the literature he writes in secret while moving through excess, broken loves, and unstable jobs. In the midst of the fall, small loyalties, friendship, and writing open cracks of light that do not promise redemption, but do offer the possibility of staying alive.

Miguel grows up in Villa de la Fuente, a town where life unfolds between the fields, construction sites, bars, and fights, and where learning to endure is almost an obligation. At home, a violent father rules through control of money and fear; outside, no one asks too many questions. Pain is not explained: it is drunk, smoked, or kept inside. Miguel, too sensitive for that world, soon begins to feel out of place.

As a teenager, he thinks about disappearing several times, but in order not to do so, he writes. He writes poetry in secret, under a pseudonym, like someone putting on a mask just to breathe. Literature becomes both refuge and weapon, something that sustains him and at the same time pushes him to live on the edge. His youth passes through precarious jobs, drugs, village festivals, and intense friendships, in an environment where violence and affection coexist without contradiction.

At nineteen, he falls in love with Dolores, an older, broken woman. The relationship is brief, overwhelming, and devastating. Then comes Eva, an intermittent love that never fully becomes whole. Miguel moves between the desire to be loved and the certainty that he does not know how to let himself be loved. After a night of excess and fights, he attempts to hang himself. His sister saves him.

Then Rober appears, his best friend: a construction worker, loyal, practical, someone who believes in work and in moving forward. Rober gets him a job on a building site, and Miguel moves in with his grandparents. The work is hard and poorly paid, but it gives him something he has never had before: a routine, a place, a minimum sense of stability. In the midst of that chaos, Lourdes reappears, a former classmate. They meet again at a poetry reading. Miguel reads in public for the first time. Between them, a calm complicity is born, made of words, care, and shared silences. For the first time, he signs what he writes with his real name.

Rober’s death in a workplace accident shatters everything. Miguel leaves construction work, studies Literature, falls and gets back up several times, without grand gestures or miracles. Lourdes stays by his side. The novel closes with the memory of the lost friend and the news of the birth of a nephew: a small, almost fragile joy, but enough to suggest that even in a harsh world—told in a raw, vibrant language—there can still be tenderness, memory, and a modest—yet real—way of moving forward.

Poética de la autodestrucción portrays the growth of a wounded sensibility in a harsh environment, where violence, precarity, and silence push life to the edge. Writing does not redeem Miguel, but it allows him to name the chaos and stay afloat. Amid losses, excess, and imperfect bonds, the novel finds a discreet glow: friendship, care, and memory as small lights of hope.

RELEVANT INFORMATION: Juan Manuel López, known as Juarma, is an illustrator, painter, and writer. He was trained in the underground circuit, where he began publishing fanzines and drawings shaped by satire, dark humor, and a fierce взгляд on everyday life. Over the years, his work has expanded into narrative, establishing him as one of the sharpest and most singular voices on the current literary scene. He has collaborated with media outlets such as El Jueves, El País, Mondo Sonoro, Karpa, and El Salto.

Poética de la autodestrucción is the third novel set in Villa de la Fuente—after Al final siempre ganan los nuestros and Punki-—a narrative universe the author plans to develop across five installments.

Conceived as a tragic coming-of-age story, the novel follows a protagonist marked by domestic violence, precarity, and emotional relationships that push him to the limit. Miguel is built as a character of great emotional complexity, with a clear and deeply human life trajectory. The text combines stark realism with intense lyricism, and from that clash between rawness and beauty emerges a story with strong audiovisual potential, capable of translating into images of great impact and authenticity.

AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV Series, Miniseries, Feature Film, TV Movie.

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish.