It's still a while until noon and Marc Moreno asks for "a Cacaolat," while avidly reviewing the pastries: "All the fattening junk. I don't know how I don't weigh a hundred kilos."
He settles at the bar with a triple smile: that of the writer with a recent title as powerful as Escapismo, that of the editor and leading figure of Catalan literature who has already published 50 works in his Llibres del Delicte, "a project that was born without any long-term plan, in the hands of a dying man admitted to a hospital," and that of the agitator at the helm of a literary festival that has positioned itself very high, Vilassar de Noir.
--I'm going to turn on the radio, any preference?
--My nine-year-old daughter drives me crazy with Reggaeton, so whatever plays won't be worse. But, if I can choose, I'll stick with Rap from the late 90s and early 2000s. I guess the music we listened to when we were young will always be mythologized.
--Coming right up, then, Common's Like Water to Chocolate.
And then, Marc Moreno's smile turns quadruple.
Literature as a lifesaver, literally
Marc was not always the writer and editor without whose contribution it is now difficult to talk about Catalan noir literature: "When I lived among ties, contracts and social security, working in an agency, my friend Xavi Díaz, a journalist and writer, encouraged me not to stop writing, offered me a small column in the magazine he directed and insisted that I go back to university to study journalism, which was what I had always wanted to do."
That was one of the great triggers that would end up projecting him into his present. The other was with the creation of the publishing house. "The first book was published in June 2013 and, in October of that same year, cancer reappeared after a couple of years of truce. Literature saved my life, because admitted to the hospital or half dead on the sofa at home, the illusion of carrying out a project like Llibres del Delicte, the contact with other authors and friends from the scene, the publication of the books was what kept me mentally active and psychologically more or less sane. Because when your world slowly fades and you see that the aggressive treatments they give you don't work, it's hard to stay whole. This project was my lifeline and what today, almost eight years later, allows me to experience firsthand an exciting world like that of literature."
Telling the less friendly Barcelona
"I love Barcelona and I will always be a guy from La Verneda, but I'm at a point in my life where I need some peace and quiet," which is why Marc comes and goes from a city he ironically describes as "a big bike lane and thousands of cars honking from traffic jam to traffic jam" and of which he laments "the loss of the center: As teenagers we used to go to the center, to the arcades, to the bars, to the clothing and music stores that you could only find there, but now no one leaves their neighborhood to go to the center. To what? To see tourists and Amancio Ortega's clothes? As a kid I always had the feeling that Barcelona was the center and my neighborhood belonged to the city by a thread. Maybe now the real Barcelona is that of the neighborhoods like mine."
A neighborhood and a city that, as an author, he masterfully describes in his books, such as the superlative Temps de Rates, which earned him the prestigious Crims de Tinta award in 2017. "My literature is not commercial, it's not kind, it's hard, from the underworld, about amoral people who are not well-liked. But it's what I like and what I want to continue writing," he declares.
--And now, what are you up to?
--Besides continuing to publish the best noir novel in Catalan at Llibres del Delicte, writing, as always, novels about losers, about people who are on the other side of the line to whom luck never smiles, because the decisions they make are always the wrong ones. The less friendly, degraded, sordid Barcelona, where, if you don't get smart, they end up eating you. An implacable shredder for those who never hit the right note.
--It's almost noon, will you stay for something to eat? Menus, tapas...?
-- Tapas, please. My parents instilled in me from a young age the healthy tradition of sitting on a terrace for vermouth, and you can throw all the fried food in the world at me, I'm going to enjoy it like a dwarf. I still think it's strange that I don't weigh two hundred kilos.