Laura Ferrero: "You can't explain the human being without that desire to find someone to share the journey with."

"For Emma, Forever Ago." An ending, an album, a dedication, a life behind four words (or five in Spanish) that, set to the melodies of Bon Iver , become the perfect heartbreak letter. An event, that of having your heart broken, that moves the arts and stirs their creators. Laura Ferrero (Barcelona, 1984) believes that lack, rupture, the lack of love, are the true driving force of creation, and when it arrives, we must make sense of this incomprehensible phenomenon. At least that's what the author of ' Love After Love ' thinks.

That Emma inspired more than just a grieving young man. It transcended time and space so that, ten years later, a young Spanish woman compiled a catalog of heartbreaks, or, as Ferrero calls it, " a love letter to the art world ." An out-of-print book that in 2025 has been rescued, modified, and delivered once again to souls seeking peace, laughter, tears, identification, or incredibly scandalized by stories of heartbreak about celebrities like Taylor Swift , Scott Neustadter ('500 Days of Summer'), and Emily Dickinson with her beloved (and sister-in-law) Susan Huntington.

All the frustrations captured in 'Love After Love' have a proven basis in fact. A sad reality for its protagonists, but traceable on the internet, in books, in magazines... they say that's the price of fame , even if more than 200 years have passed since one's birth, as is the case with Søren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen. He a philosopher, she a writer; friends and fiancés; lovers of melancholy and fear; the man asks for her hand in marriage, he himself, a year later, breaks off the engagement, leaving a wound that never healed.

-What is better, to leave or to be left?

-I think the side that's leaving has a clearer idea. At least they know what happened, but often the one who gets dumped is the one who's left without understanding why they were dumped. Leaving isn't easy, but at least you have the certainty of knowing what happened.

Readers can relate to many of these stories; Camille Claudel lived in the shadow of her lover and mentor, the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Tracey Emin spent four days without leaving her bed (this first part is more common) and transformed that room into a work of art that sold for more than three million euros (not everyone can achieve this anymore). Sophie Calle , a French conceptual artist, gathered 107 women to help her understand the email she was left with. Laura Ferrero comments on the interesting nature of this last anecdote: "I find this example of what these stories tell revealing; in the end, it's what we do when faced with what we don't understand. Human beings can't be explained without that desire to find, not just one's soul mate, but someone with whom to share the journey, or with whom to have a conversation. What is love if not maintaining a constant conversation with someone who can look at you? "

Another very human quality linked to these disastrous experiences is the ability to mature after them. Ferrero asserts that part of this personal growth is learning to know what you don't want, what doesn't fit. This helped the writer with this new reissue: "All the stories are rewritten; we removed a lot; I think 40% of the book is new . It's not just my way of writing that's changed, but my vision of the world. The same goes for Marc [Pallarés]'s illustrations; it's not that he has a different graphic code, it's that he's a different person ."

'Love is letting go,' 'there are more fish in the sea,' or even, 'Paris is the city of love.' "The challenge of writing a book like this is, above all, not to fall into those truths that no longer mean anything ," the writer responds forcefully. "Besides, every time I go to Paris, I remember and think, the city of love, why?"

Clichés, clichés, which for Ferrero, "if they're said, there's a reason for it," but which are in contrast to those prejudices that are nothing more than "poorly thought-out thoughts." What both branches of hackneyed phrases do have in common is that society constantly resorts to them, like slogans that "we've swallowed, we've internalized without question, but they don't make any sense ."

On the other hand, there are the facts, the proven truths... science. A discipline that strives to discover the secrets of the heart, but falls short. Helen Fisher was an anthropologist and biologist who dedicated her life to delving into the best-kept secrets of the human body. She and her team conducted various experiments. Once, they asked her if knowing so much about love made it harder for her to fall in love. Her response was perfect and, in the eyes of the Spaniard, very funny: "We know perfectly well how bad it is to eat a piece of chocolate cake, and there we are, eating even the crumbs."

-If science were to discover how to control feelings, would you use it?

-I don't think so. To what extent, by erasing a person who has hurt you, aren't you erasing many other things that you have no control over? You never control the tentacles of what has happened to you, so I personally wouldn't do it, although sometimes I think I would.