Novelar Barcelona

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Among the regular controversies we have in the city, one that often repeats is that of the great novel of Barcelona—read with a pompous voice. As in all great universal debates—Yoga or swimming? Sea or mountain? Profiteroles, cream or chocolate?—there is no single answer: classics usually cite Vida privada as the great Barcelona novel—you always look good, citing Sagarra—while the moderns opt for Francisco Casavella's Watusi trilogy. And then there's Sergi Pàmies who, without further ado, appropriated the title in 1998 with the stories of La gran novel·la sobre Barcelona: in the Internet era, this is called domain hijacking. In the impromptu survey, we would surely find readers who would remember the best-selling bricks set in the city, such as Carlos Ruiz Zafón's La sombra del viento, Ildefonso Falcones' La catedral del Mar or the recent Origen, by the tireless Dan Brown, while a much smaller number of readers would highlight collective attempts to novelize the city of Barcelona, such as the Matar el monstre project by the Comanegra publishing house, where seven contemporary writers have written seven connected Barcelona novels, in a Frankenstein that Joan Esculies already discussed in estas páginas.

If we have so many candidacies for the great novel of Barcelona it is because we possibly still lack the complete book about the city, or because the portraits that have been made are old, insufficient or partial. With the aim of filling gaps, the program Barcelona City of Literature started in 2017 the Montserrat Roig grants, which provide a salary and an office to the writers of our land—novelists, poets, essayists, playwrights—so that they can carry out their projects, and at least for a couple of months they can abandon generalized precariousness. So far, thirty authors with thirty projects that have Barcelona and its inhabitants as protagonists have been subsidized, and it seems that the City Council's idea is to continue promoting Barcelona literature for many more years.

A few days ago, the latest scholarship projects were presented at the new bookstore La Carbonera in Poble Sec. Amidst a select audience—the writers and their families—we heard about fascinating projects, such as the novelization Oliver García Mancebo is preparing about the enigmatic assault on the Central Bank of Barcelona in 1981, with a book that will have the structure of Choose Your Own Adventure—the technical term is interactive fiction, and which will speculate whether it was really the work of anarchists and thugs, or if there was something darker behind it. Writing from Sala Beckett, the Basque playwright Mikel Fernandino has explored what our authorities would do if one day we woke up to a Banksy painting stamped on a wall in the Raval: would they apply civility regulations and erase it immediately? Or would it be removed with strappo and exhibited at MACBA? At Montserrat Roig there is also room for essays, and Álex Chico explained that it has been good for him to work from the Miró Foundation to prepare a work on immigration, with chapters dedicated to the shantytowns that populated Montjuïc, while the Catalan-Argentine Silvana Vogt will set her next book in the episode of extreme drought we experienced in 2008.

And looking ahead to autumn, the Barcelona stories do not stop: ten more writers will receive scholarships, such as the historian Miquel Carandell, who will immortalize the hundred years of history of the taxidermist in Plaça Reial; Gabriel Ventura will write about two teenagers discovering the world of art in the city, and Lilian Neuman will focus on the bar El Nus, in the Ribera neighborhood.

Barcelona novels: Who wants just one when you can have a thousand and one?

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From top to bottom and from left to right: El día del Watusi by Francisco Casavella, Vida Privada by Josep Maria de Segarra, La catedral del mar by Ildefonso Falcones, La gran novel·la sobre Barcelona by Sergi Pàmies, Origin by Dan Brown and La sombra del viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.