When we woke up on June 19 a year ago, among all the news of the pandemic's advance, another sad event caught our attention: the writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón had passed away in the city of Los Angeles due to the colon cancer he had been suffering from for some years. And we fell silent. That silence that is enclosed in the final period of a novel that we have enjoyed but have just finished.
Zafón always said that he didn't quite know where his vocation came from, although literature and books were always important to his father. He wrote in The Shadow of the Wind "I believe that nothing happens by chance; things have a secret plan, even if we don't know it," a phrase that, we could almost say, was premonitory of what would be his future success in the world of literature.
His first novels were dedicated to young adult fiction, but even in them, we began to glimpse that ghostly mantle of vapor that served as a backdrop to tell us about a city, a space, or a state of mind. The fog, which he loved so much ---almost as much as searching for and collecting dragons---, would be a guiding element in his literature.
"I believe that nothing happens by chance; things have a secret plan, even if we don't know it" (The Shadow of the Wind)The Barcelona writer is one of the most recognized in international literature of our days and, furthermore, holds the title of being the most read in the world after Cervantes, as his works have been translated into more than 50 languages. In fact, the sagaThe Cemetery of Forgotten Bookshas turned out to be one of the great phenomena of contemporary literature on five continents, but he never in his lifetime allowed it to be brought to the big screen, jealous of preserving intact the magic of what he had created.
An admirer of composer John Williams, author of the soundtracks for Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Indiana Jones, Zafón also ventured into composing music, even before he started writing. But it wasn't until 2014 that he was able to premiere the symphonic suite he composed for The Shadow of the Wind at the Palau de la Música, which was arranged for the Simfònica del Vallès by Gregori Ferrer. "I write music without pretensions, as a diversion and also as an escape valve when I am immersed in the creation of a novel; and in both tasks I look for the most effective resources to create the atmosphere that the work needs," he stated. He was invited to play the piano, an instrument he mastered, at the presentation, but he claimed to be a modest pianist in addition to having professional commitments. That true modesty, which did not change one iota when he became a giant of literature.
"With music, I enter through the back door of the story I am telling, and it is very curious, because sometimes it shows me the way forward," he commented about his creative process. Although his musical compositions are another character in his novels, they are not recorded on disc, as he shared them with his readers through his website. But it could well be a beautiful tribute for his pieces to be recorded by an orchestra and for us to also discover that profile he developed in parallel to his books.
Despite moving to Los Angeles as soon as he could, he never forgot the place where he was born. Barcelona is to the Zafonian universe what the fictional city of Macondo is to Gabriel Garcia Márquez's literature. It is not just another actress, but the perfect setting, the backdrop that frames any dreamed-up story in which even an invented corner seems real. And his characters—as happens to many of us who have come from elsewhere to live here—cannot help but be poetically fascinated by the city. Although we must recognize that Zafón drew a city full of mist and fog, closer to Dickens' London than to the Mediterranean enclave it is, he manages to make the reader believe it and recognize it as such.
"With music, I enter through the back door of the story I am telling, and it is very curious, because sometimes it shows me the way forward"His name was linked to that of other great literati such as Mercè Rodoreda, Juan Marsé, Carmen Laforet, Eduardo Mendoza or Manuel Vázquez Montalban, who also portrayed the Catalan capital and, in some way, contributed to Unesco declaring it a City of Literature in 2015.
Since 2001, literary routes inspired by the writer's books began to emerge in Barcelona, and they have not stopped growing, to such an extent that the Planeta publishing house itself, seeing that amateur guides were being published in different countries, commissioned Sergi Dòria ---with the author's blessing--- to write the Guide to Carlos Ruiz Zafón's Barcelona, to unify under an official work the routes that follow the books as faithfully as possible. Perhaps it is the ideal excuse for us to rediscover the city with new eyes through literature, like those of Daniel Sempere, the ten-year-old protagonist of the saga.
His name was linked to that of other great literati such as Mercè Rodoreda, Juan Marsé, Carmen Laforet, Eduardo Mendoza or Manuel Vázquez MontalbanA few days ago, the Barcelona City Council paid tribute to the writer with personalities who were very close to the man he was, friends, and also with the participation of his life partner, Mari Carmen Bellver. Many were those who bet on him in his beginnings, among whom Terenci Moix stands out, and how lucky we were that it was so, because they allowed us to discover that true gems inhabit a Cemetery of Forgotten Books.
There is something that defines the man behind the name and it is the presentation he made of himself, which we can still find on his website today. So let's let Carlos Ruiz Zafón tell us, once again, a beautiful story, so that, like good books, we always want to return to it:
"My fondness for dragons goes back a long way. Barcelona is a city of dragons, which adorn or guard many of its facades, and I fear I am one of them. Perhaps that is why, out of solidarity with the little monster, I have been collecting them for many years and offering them refuge in my house, a dragon's lair. To this day, there are already more than 400 dragon creatures in my census, which increases every month. In addition to having been born in the year, of course, of the dragon, my ties with these green, fire-breathing beasts are numerous. We are nocturnal creatures, fond of darkness, not particularly sociable, not very friendly with noblemen and knights errant, and difficult to get to know."