"I must be half cat. At 18, I had an accident with a Jumbo 747 in Tehran. At 23, four months pregnant, I crashed in a small plane in Puig Padrós. It was a six-hour rescue with snow up to my groin. The girl was born perfect. At 65, I was in a coma for two months due to covid, given up for dead, I recovered. I spent three months in the hospital in total and two in a wheelchair to learn to walk again. And here I am," explains the journalist, publicist, and writer, Anna R. Alós.
She sips an evening glass of red wine, leaning on the bar, with a smile that oscillates between very affectionate and very alert. "If you are open to things happening, things happen. And I have always been open," she states.
Daughter of Pueblo Nuevo ---"before it was written separately and an enlightened councilor joined it in the 2000s"---, Anna R. Alós studied Information Sciences in Bellaterra. "I liked advertising more than journalism, but life led me to both. The first year I spent on the lawn becoming a communist. It didn't last long, because I distributed but always went ahead of everyone, it wasn't fair. I never received."
She began her professional journey during the last throes of Francoism, "when smoking a joint was something akin to being free. How naive!", and recalls that Barcelona "creative, hopeful, transgressive, elegant in its behaviors, sophisticated without being cheesy." The city whose meeting places were the "Café de la Ópera, the Pastís or the Araña", and where many things happened.
Proud of her great "capacity for dispersion," Anna R. Alós has just published her first fiction novel, Llámame Teresa (Roca), based on the true story of a prostitute who captivated the Buenos Aires and Barcelona bourgeoisies at the beginning of the last century. "One of the greatest adventures of my life has been getting into narrative. Luis Racionero, a great friend, already told me it was the most difficult."
She now announces that she is already working on her second novel, "and thinking of a literary action to induce reading. And, also, planning a trip."
The fallacy of reconciling
As a journalist, Anna R. Alós began her journey at Hogares Modernos magazine, the same one where Vázquez Montalbán had started. From there, she has lent her talent to media as diverse as Cosmopolitan, Mía, several titles from the Vocento group, and La Vanguardia's Magazine.
"In 1998, I was hired by El Mundo de Catalunya for a new section: Crónica Social. For more than 22 years, I've been paid to go to events, inaugurations, fashion shows. I like that job; it gives me contacts, very good times, friends, and, of course, enemies. But, above all, I learn a lot about the human condition, even my own, since we're at it and by rebound," she laughs.
During that period, things kept happening to her. "As a social chronicler, I have experienced sublime moments. Like the day my heel got caught in a manhole and, losing my balance, I ended up embracing Flavio Briatore. Poor man, he looked at me as if I were a disturbed fan. His security team tried to separate me but couldn't because I couldn't let go of him. The shoe eventually gave way. Or the day Naomi Campbell grabbed my arm and locked me with her in her dressing room because she didn't want to walk the runway and wanted me to fix it. Or when Carod Rovira fled upon seeing me, because of a chronicle I had written after his famous meeting with ETA."
Anna R. Alós claims to have no fear of work. "Because studying, working, getting married at 21, working, being a mother, working, getting divorced, working, continuing to be a mother, working, new partner, working, new breakup, working... Do you realize? The reconciliation between work and family life is a fallacy. I have always been freelance, and in that sector, you either adapt or you die trying because they stab you."
Her great pride is "having been able to raise my children, without drama," and she is clear that the most important thing in her life is her family ---"in which we are all independent"--- and her work.
Beloved city (until seven and a half years ago)
Anna R. Alós loves Princesa street, "even though it has a royal name to which I am little attached." She likes its history, opened "to connect the Ciutadella park with the most popular neighborhood of the moment, El Raval"; its elegance, "since it was an aristocratic street, and many of its apartments are authentic palaces"; its people, "the painter and playwright Santiago Rusiñol was born in one of those houses" and she has a special memory for El Rey de la Magia, "a shop where, when I was 10 years old, I could spend hours hand in hand with my grandfather, buying stuffed rats, magic tricks, witch masks or stink bombs, which I would then throw in the nuns' school. And my grandfather encouraged me to do it, as he was anticlerical."
---So your relationship with the city is good, right?
"I adored Barcelona until seven and a half years ago, because for the first six months of the Colau council I broke a lance in their favor. I got a good hit, because I have never encountered people more classist, more prone to insult, and more imposing. What a shame! It seemed they could bring common sense to the system, but they have only brought classism. And a lot of accumulated resentment, and that is lethal," replies the journalist and writer, who confesses to living most of the time in the mountains, "because Barcelona is unpleasant and uncomfortable for me." For example, because of the issue of rats: "they are not only on the ground, if you look up, towards the treetops, you will see a festival."
---Here there are no rats and the kitchen is spotless. What there is, is a good gastronomic offer, in case you want to accompany your next glass of wine with something to eat.
Anna R. Alós lets out a laugh and briefly reviews the culinary offer before determining:
---Let it be a menu, and with dessert. Although I'll tell you: in the next life I ask to weigh 52 kilos and measure 1.65. And eat without gaining weight!