He walks, with an elegant stride, towards the bar and asks to turn off the radio. "What's important to me in a bar is conversation. It has to be a space for communication and, often, bars and restaurants, with their terrible acoustics and omnipresent music, end up being spaces of non-communication." And no one, in their right mind, would want to miss out on a chat with who is, possibly, the most important chronicler and connoisseur of the city's history.
In Destino, Lluís Permanyer began what would be an impressive journalistic career that continues to influence legions of journalists and that totals thousands of articles and more than 80 books, most of them written in Catalan. "I was the first journalist here to use Proust's 31-question questionnaire, which I had read in his biography, to conduct interviews. This allowed me to interview great personalities such as Simenon, Rubinstein, Carner, Espriu, Miró or Pla."
--One could almost say you learned self-taught.
--I have never stopped learning. In fact, more than a job, what I do I consider my fun.
And he announces that, during the pandemic, locked at home, he has had the opportunity to work on two books of imminent publication, a volume of Eixample Desaparegut, for Efadós, and another, for RBA, "on the relationship between five modernist architects, Sagnier, Puig i Cadafalch, Domènec i Montaner, Gaudí and Jujol." This last one, a figure of that genial artist, absolutely ahead of his time, whose vindication Lluís Permanyer himself led years ago.
Always independent
When Joan Clos was mayor, they wanted to bestow the Gold Medal of Barcelona upon the journalist and writer. "I didn't accept, of course."
--Seriously? You didn't accept?
--No. I don't want anything from power. I am independent. Everything I have written has been by my own criteria, I am the ultimate and sole responsible for my achievements and my possible errors. They have never told me what I have to write about and I have never accepted an assignment for something I didn't want to write. Nor have I accepted positions of responsibility, because I only want to write about what I want, and not command or be accountable.
And he recalls when, being at La Vanguardia in the 70s, "I published an article with the headline Honorable Tarradellas, about the president then in exile, which cost me that the director of the newspaper forbade me to sign for a season. A big fuss was made, because that article even appeared reproduced on the cover of Alcázar. Years later, with democracy, Tarradellas wanted me to be press chief of the newly reconstituted Generalitat".
He said no, of course.
Barcelona from hate to love
"My relationship with this city began to be one of hate, because there was a dictatorship that affected us and made this place unlivable. In fact, when I joined La Vanguardia my idea was to be a correspondent because I wanted to leave. It couldn't be, but, at least, I was able to spend 22 years in the international section that allowed you to travel and where censorship hardly intervened".
The change took place in 1988: "I started to write chronicles of Barcelona, always on my own and without the newspaper telling me anything. There, my love affair with the city began, which culminated in five unforgettable days in October of that year, when I guided Stephen Hawking. He was a man who never said no. He saw everything. When the visit ended, he said that nowhere else had he been treated so well. His wife didn't want to return, she was in love with this place".
What is beyond doubt is the love for Barcelona that his countless writings have spread to a good number of readers and followers of his work.
From the city, Lluís Permanyer is hurt by what is done against it, "like the Diagonal tram or that tactical urbanism that mutilates the Eixample". That's why, he says, he has never wanted to be a member of any party. "I always campaign for Barcelona, the city is my only party and it's one in which only I fit".
--By the way, are you going to have something to drink?
--Well, I would tell you a Permanyer Cocktail like the one they serve, in honor of yours truly, at the bar of Muy Buenas on Carme Street, but perhaps better a glass of red wine.
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