"The man from the funeral agency arrived so punctually that María dos Prazeres was still in her bathrobe and with her head full of curlers, and barely had time to put a red rose behind her ear so as not to look as undesirable as she felt. She lamented her state even more when she opened the door and saw that it was not a gloomy notary, as she supposed death merchants should be, but a shy young man in a plaid jacket and a tie with colorful birds. He wore no coat, despite Barcelona's uncertain spring, whose drizzle of slanted winds almost always made it less tolerable than winter." This is how María dos Prazeres begins, a story written by Gabriel García Márquez in the seventies, in his Barcelona apartment, specifically at 168 República Argentina Avenue. The Colombian writer lived in the Catalan capital between 1967 and 1975. "Barcelona, for mysterious reasons, is the best city to write in, besides being, for my taste, the best in the world," they say the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude used to say at that time.
That the city was so welcoming and magnificent for Gabo to write in was, to a large extent, thanks to his literary agent, the great Carmen Balcells. On Monday, November 7, at Casa SEAT, writer Carme Riera recalled those literarily lavish years for Barcelona, within the framework of the Moments Estelars cycle organized by The New Barcelona Post. Riera is a highly authorized voice to speak about it, not only because she is one of the great writers represented by Carmen Balcells but because, after dealing with her for forty years, she considered her a good friend. For all these reasons, she recently published the book Carmen Balcells, traficante de palabras (Debate, 2022), a very interesting story full of anecdotes.
During the conversation with journalist Toni Aira, Riera joked that Balcells would never have authorized this autobiography, but said that, nevertheless, she decided to write it to contribute to the beatification of the "big mama," as Gabo called her, who died in 2015. I remember thinking that having played a decisive role in turning Barcelona into the capital of Hispanic American literature and, above all, having protected the interests of authors with the Balcells clause can be considered directly miraculous, therefore, for my part, they can already raise her to the altars.
"Barcelona, for mysterious reasons, is the best city to write in, besides being, for my taste, the best in the world," they explain Gabriel García Márquez used to say at that time.Half a century after García Márquez settled in Barcelona, another Colombian celebrity landed in the Catalan capital, ready to create a home very close to the city: Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, better known as Shakira. In her case, the Colombian singer-songwriter, born in Barranquilla, a city also intimately linked to García Márquez, had one single and powerful reason to settle in Barcelona: Gerard Piqué.Officially, Shakira has been living in Barcelona since 2015, although the Tax Agency maintains that she has resided here since 2012 and, for this reason, accuses her of having defrauded the public treasury of 14.5 million euros.
During these last years, be it seven or ten, Shakira has not only acted as an ambassador for both Barça and Barcelona. In La bicicleta, a song she released in 2010 with fellow Colombian Carlos Vives, she sings Lleva, llévame en tu bicicleta / Pa' que juguemos bola de trapo y en chancleta / Que si a Piqué, algún día, le muestras el Tayrona / Después no querrá irse pa' Barcelona. The city is also the setting for the music video of Sale el sol that Shakira commissioned from her trusted photographer and director: Jaume de Laiguana. By the way, the Barcelona City Council was furious when it learned some details of said filming, specifically, for two scenes: Shakira bathing in a public fountain in the city ---what a bad example!--- and the Colombian riding along the Barcelona seafront on a Harley-Davidson... without a helmet! A decade later, just the day after Carme Riera's conference at Casa SEAT, Shakira and Piqué have announced, in a statement, an agreement to end their relationship and the singer's departure.
During these last years, be it seven or ten, Shakira has not only acted as an ambassador for both Barça and BarcelonaI am convinced that these years of Shakira in Barcelona have contributed to the projection of the city. It is enough to review some of the figures that concretize the Colombian's popularity to gauge the impact on social networks of Shakira's messages related to Barcelona: 79.4 followers on Instagram, more than 100 million on Facebook, the first Latin singer to reach 53 million monthly plays on Spotify...Perhaps for all of this, now that he is going to move to Miami, I have the feeling that his departure, in terms of popularity, is also a bit the end of an era for the city, just as it was, in its time and with all due respect, that of Gabo and some other writers of theboomliterary of the seventies. In short, we will miss you, Shakira!
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