In 2016 I published Proyecto escritorio. La escritura y sus espacios, a precious and beautifully edited set of essays by Cuadernos del Vigía. I wrote in the prologue:
I am interested in the places where writing lurks. Whenever I visit a writer friend, I always try to get myself to pass through his or her sanctum sanctorum, when I am not snooping around like a vicious voyeur. I feel an irrepressible attraction for these spaces of profaned intimacy. In the house-museums of writers I run to look for their own rooms first of all, and although they usually disappoint me (they have something of a wax museum or stuffed animal), I do not cease in the pursuit of the secret that I imagine they contain. I am referring to the physical place, but also to the metaphorical space where creative processes are generated. Is there a friendly space somewhere, a source space from which writing can happily spring forth just by wishing for it? I wonder if the places where we write will be a state of mind or if we are fatally subjected to the influence of our surroundings; if, as Menchu Gutiérrez asks, writing on glass or on wood will result in different writings; if opening the window to let in the noise of the street (Marta Sanz) will communicate to what you write a whole manifesto of impurities. Or what Mary McCarthy was intrigued about Elizabeth Bishop’s spaces: how was it possible that her poetry flowed so delicately in that dirty and messy workroom and on that even messier desk? Why did she never clean it? Perhaps so as not to disturb that mysterious relationship between the clutter of her desk and the elegant neatness of her writing.
[…]