"I am the daughter and niece of journalists, so since childhood I attended the gatherings of journalists and cultural figures that were organized at home. I observed them with curious eyes and from them I absorbed the passion for writing, photography, and staying up-to-date with everything that happened around me." It's noon and the writer and anthropologist Eva Espinet savors a cold vermouth with a few drops of angostura. In the background, the eloquent phrasing of pianist Connie Han and, on the bar, the parishioner's first novel, Un punto azul en el Mediterráneo (Harper Collins) "which the publisher fell in love with and wanted to publish, without changing a single word."
---Congratulations! What is it about?
---The action takes place in Palamós in 1995. There, Marina reunites sixty years later with a teenage love, Hans, a Nazi who fought in World War II. A devastating revelation will test the protagonists' courage at the most decisive moment of their lives.
With studies in Geography and History and a degree in Cultural and Social Anthropology, Eva Espinet assures that "being a historian and anthropologist opened the doors for me to the main advertising agencies and as a journalist at the '92 Olympic Games. Since then, I have worked in everything that has to do with the field of words." Thus, she is the author of several books such as Apolo, 75 años sin parar de bailar, about the mythical venue in Nou de la Rambla, or a Diccionario de citas, dichos y refranes, "for which I was paid, in its day, a million of the old pesetas, which allowed me to live a year in London. It was as if I had won the lottery!"
Transcendence is in travel
That year in London was the first of the trips that have marked the main turning points in the writer's life trajectory. "My second decisive trip coincided with the 2013 crisis. My wife and I went to live in Southeast Asia. It was an incredible personal experience that I captured in a story, Días de Asia, which received the Accésit prize in the VI Women Travelers Short Story Award and was published in a book."
---Wow! And what made you come back?
"The fact that I was offered a job I couldn't refuse, but soon life took a turn and we opened the doors of our house to host gastronomic events for people from all over the world." Thus, the parishioner worked for five years as a home chef, taking her neighbors on a journey through their palates. "And I tell this because one of our guests, Robin Keuneke, an American writer, offered me to collaborate on her book The Iberian table: an introduction to the Spanish Mediterranean diet as art director, photographer, and content advisor." The book will be published at the end of this year, says Eva, smiling and by her own confession, with a rebellious and stubborn character, "pure fire and passion, like a good Aries."
Proud to have written her first novel, "a risky adventure that took me three years and was the fruit of a pandemic," Eva Espinet says she is already preparing her second fiction book which, she anticipates, "will take place in Italy and the protagonists will be a partisan family."
The city of the kiss
The constant of travel comes up again. "I am in love with Barcelona, although that crush happened after traveling the world because, until then, it felt small to me and seemed provincial. Then, I realized that I was privileged to have been born here."
Enthusiastic about her neighborhood, the Eixample, writer Eva Espinet says she walks everywhere "through this cosmopolitan, vibrant, Mediterranean city, where the sun illuminates us three hundred days a year, a luxury, surrounded by unique mountains for skiing, and wonderful towns." Even so, she expresses her despair "when seeing the degradation of neighborhoods like Raval or Ribera, places with so much history and miscegenation that seem abandoned to their fate and it's a shame. Lifelong residents live in poverty and are harassed by vulture investors who want to destroy the city."
But love wins. "There is a corner in Barcelona, unknown to many locals, and it is pure poetry. You have to go to Isidre Nonell square to discover it. It is a photomosaic made by photographer Joan Fontcuberta and ceramist Antoni Cumella and is titled The World Begins with Every Kiss. The mural was composed with photographs of anonymous Barcelonans on four thousand tiles that form a single image: two lips kissing. It celebrates free and universal love. The work turns this into the city of the kiss, an extraordinary metaphor for the plurality of people who coexist here. I believe it is a kiss between two women, a beautiful representation of that plurality. I love it!", she asserts, finishing her vermouth and encouraging Barcelonans to travel through their own city.
---What you will love is our gastronomic offer, if after the vermouth you want to stay for lunch. You have everything: portions, tapas, menu, combined dish, à la carte. All delicacies!
Eva Espinet cannot then suppress her laughter, before determining, without a hint of doubt, that "where there is the à la carte, everything else is removed!".