"Not everyone is called to write Ulysses. My approach to writing is more playful, but I am proud to write works that reach people, that move them." Carlos Martín Portugal is sitting on the terrace of the Bar, savoring a tortilla skewer –"with onion, the doubt offends"– and a mid-morning beer. From inside the establishment, the faint notes of The Police's Message in a bottle escape. The writer puts on his best bon vivant face, "which is what my friends usually tell me I am." The solete, the pleasant air, the lively people, the conversation. Pure life.
"I was the happy son of a very Catholic and traditional family –he recalls–, and I studied in religious schools." A childhood without upsets, cheerful, straddling Verneda and Sant Andreu, which ended in the swerve of a rebellious adolescence. "At sixteen, I came into contact with the Circo de los Muchachos, an itinerant commune that spent a year installed in a farmhouse in Sant Vicenç dels Horts."
His time in that community opened up a new world for Carlos. "It was my starting point to get fully into punk and heavy rock." Those were years of partying, of a thousand concerts. Of searching, experimenting, breaking things and ideas. He enrolled in Economics and went to class for the first two days, "then I never showed up there again." That ended in his early twenties, when his father gave him an ultimatum and he started working in a banking institution. "I spent two years living and working in Cardona and then I returned to Barcelona."
He met the woman of his life and his life began to get on track. "I spent twenty-six years working in that institution, rising to become a manager." During these years, he became fond of jotting down anecdotes in several notebooks that friends, family, and clients told him. Small life stories with great historical backgrounds, "with the idea of, perhaps, someday, doing something with all those anecdotes." His working life continued its course, but it was not smooth sailing. "I constantly battled with the bosses, who wanted me to place a series of products that I didn't want to place, because they were bad; but they didn't care about ruining people." Until, one day, that was too much.
Birth of a writer
With the sightings of the imminent outbreak of the financial crisis, in 2007, Carlos Martín Portugal could no longer continue doing what he was doing. "My grandfather used to say that to make one rich person, you need a million poor people, and that's what the crisis has been: a maneuver to create more poor people and make the rich richer, until now, when the separation between those who have the most and those who have the least exceeds the standard of the Middle Ages."He felt the need to end one life to start a new one."I negotiated an exit with the entity and found myself at forty-two years old without a job, with all the time at my disposal."It was then that he dusted off the notebooks where he had been jotting down those memories and anecdotes that had been transmitted to him, and the project of The Voices of the Forgotten, an ambitious trilogy that reviews post-war Barcelona in the 40s, 50s, and 60s of the last century, took shape. He has published the first two volumes: The Man Who Could Have Killed Franco (of which the second edition has just been released) and The Tears of Somorrostro. In both, one can feel "the weight of that national Catholicism that molded and weighed on the society of the time… and still weighs on us."
In the final phase of the documentation process for the third novel – "which is the part I like the most, along with my wife and I going to festivals and fairs to promote the books" – he already has a small legion of unconditional fans eagerly awaiting his next title.
We cannot be losers
"Barcelona is another protagonist of my novels,I am truly in love with this multicultural city, although with the soul of a village, overlooking the Mediterranean and with neighborhoods like the Eixample or my beloved Barceloneta." For all these reasons, it is very difficult for the local to understand "this slow colonization to which we are allowing ourselves to be subjected by hordes ofexpatsand tourists."He finishes his tortilla skewer and drains the last sip of beer, before adding, "I hate that we are losers, that Barcelona is a loser." He knows what he's talking about. He, who one day decided he wasn't going to create poor people, started writing beautiful books. He didn't want to lose; he didn't want to get lost.
"What never loses in quality and essence is our gastronomic offer. If you want to eat something, which it's about time, we have tapas, raciones, menu, combined dishes…". A seasoned tapas connoisseur, Carlos Martín Portugal is clear: "tapas and raciones, of course, that's the best way to try a little bit of everything", he says, smiling, while tapping his foot to the rhythm of Bowie's Oh! you pretty things emanating from inside the Bar.