Eduardo Mendoza recounts that one day years ago he found himself trapped on the Rambla. There was a public transport strike and there was no way to get into a taxi. He was with Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, both had to travel to other parts of the city. Desperate, they thought about what they could do. And they were clear that there was only one way out: call Carmen Balcells. From a phone booth, they spoke with her and she told them not to worry, to go up to the Boadas cocktail bar to wait. When they arrived, their favorite drinks were waiting for them and, once consumed, their vehicle arrived. Of course, then Vázquez Montalbán equated the literary agent with James Bond, as an agent "with a license to kill," even though he had not suffered any mishap.
These are some of the many anecdotes that revolve around the hypnotic figure of Carmen Balcells (Santa Fe de Segarra, 1930- Barcelona, 2015), the literary agent who put Barcelona on the map of letters. The writer Carme Riera dealt with her for almost forty years and has just written her first authorized biography, Carmen Balcells, traficante de palabras (Debate, 2022), so she will have plenty of material to tell more stories like those of Mendoza and Vázquez Montalbán in the new session of the cycle The New Barcelona - Moments Estel·lars. There will undoubtedly be Balcells' well-known tears when she had finished reading a book, a joy for writers, even if one thinks otherwise, since it was the definitive proof that she had liked it.
The sixth session of The New Barcelona - Moments Estel·lars, which has the collaboration of Must Media Group, CASA SEAT and Barcelona Global, will be held on Monday, November 7 at 6:30 p.m. in the CASA SEAT auditorium. To attend as an audience and be able to ask questions to the speaker, it is necessary to reserve a place in advance. To get your ticket, click here.
The conversation between Toni Aira and Carme Riera to analyze the Balcells phenomenon and Barcelona's literary capital will be recorded and can later be recovered in podcast format on Spotify or in video format on our Youtube channel. The first five chapters of Moments Estel·lars are already available, starring Juan Antonio Samaranch, Lluís Bassat, Joan Laporta, the tandem formed by Maite Esteve-Joan Oliveras and the last one with Pau Relat, held on October 10.
Riera has written Carmen Balcells, traficante de palabras after interviewing family, friends, authors, editors, and agents who have spoken to him about an ungraspable myth for literature. Even more so considering that it all started almost by chance. In the 1950s, Balcells had been hired by the writer Vintila Horia as a correspondent in Barcelona for the Acer Literary Agency, a job she dedicated herself to during her extra hours, since her main occupation was that of secretary of the Guild of Manufacturers of Machinery for the Production of Knitwear. When, in 1960, Horia won the Goncourt Prize and sold the agency, Balcells decided to set up on her own in the same rented apartment where she lived and quickly managed to change the publishing landscape, eliminating lifelong contracts and other impossible clauses. All this allowed writers to start living off the profits generated by their works and contributed to boosting the golden age represented by the boom of Latin American literature.
Half a century later, that small venture allowed her to represent six Nobel Prize in Literature winners: Miguel Ángel Asturias, Pablo Neruda, Vicente Aleixandre, Gabriel García Márquez, Camilo José Cela, and Mario Vargas Llosa. And the list of authors she introduced is incredibly long: Julio Cortázar, Pablo Neruda, Carlos Fuentes, Isabel Allende, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Terenci Moix, Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Marsé, Miguel Delibes, Javier Cercas, Rosa Montero, António Lobo Antunes... Reaching more than 300. If one of the key figures of her career was García Márquez, who called her Mamá Grande, it is not surprising that the Barcelona City Council has decided to dedicate a square to her in front of the new library dedicated to the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Carme Riera (Palma de Mallorca, 1948) has been one of the writers represented by Balcells, with a long bibliography in Catalan and Spanish. Her first work arrived in 1975 with the short story collection Te deix, amor, la mar com a penyora. Shortly after, she received the Prudenci Bertrana Novel Prize (1980) for Una primavera per a Domenico Guarini; the Anagrama Essay Prize (1988) for La escuela de Barcelona: Barral, Gil de Biedma, Goytisolo: el núcleo poético de la generación de los cincuenta, and the Ramón Llull Prize (1989) for Joc de miralls. She has also received the Josep Pla Prize (1994), the National Narrative Prize and the Joan Crexells and Lletra d'Or (1995) for her novel Dins el darrer blau, as well as the National Literature Prize and Serra d'Or Critics' Prize (2001) for Cap al cel obert and the Sant Jordi Prize (2003) for La meitat de l'ànima. In 2015, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport honored her with the National Prize for Literature.
Riera's first work arrived in 1975 with the short story collection Te deix, amor, la mar com a penyoraRiera combines her role as a writer with teaching. With a degree in Philosophy and Letters and a doctorate in Philology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Riera has been a professor of Spanish Literature since 1995 at said university, where she has set novels such as Nature almost dead, her first novel in the noir genre. She has also been director of the José Agustín Goytisolo Chair at the UAB since 2002. Currently, she is vice-president of the Spanish Center for Reprographic Rights (CEDRO), an entity she presided over between 2015 and 2019. Likewise, she holds chair n in the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and has been distinguished with the Gold Medal of the Balearic Islands, the highest award granted by the autonomous government.
In the new session of The New Barcelona - Moments Estel·lars, Carme Riera will also be able to reveal some details of her imminent novel, La pau dels somnis feliços (Grup 62). In Spanish, La paz de los sueños felices, will be published by Bruguera. In this novel illustrated by Silja Goetz, Riera recovers the figure of the mermaid, which already appeared in La veu de la sirena (2015). Nise is the protagonist of the story, a young mermaid with wings instead of a fish tail who decides to escape her reclusion and see the world.