Almost 15 years after its release, La Campana reissues the fundamental La Sisena Flota a Barcelona by writer and chronicler Xavier Theros. An essential book that meticulously explores the almost four decades in which the streets of the Barrio Chino (and surrounding areas) were teeming with American sailors. Through multiple interviews, newspaper archives, and a necessary touch of sentimental memory, the volume captures ---with all its colors and smells--- the footprint that the presence of those sturdy lads had on a street network that mutated, from the third-worldism of a post-war period when rationing cards were still in use, to the takeoff of a city about to stop being pre-Olympic, halfway between the illusion of being on the map and the anger over everything that this would entail.
A bombshell, a few months after the NATO referendum, put an end to that idyll that had begun in 1951 with the docking of the first American aircraft carrier in the port and, with it, the entry into our city of American tobacco, rock & roll and rhythm & blues, Coca-Cola and, above all, dollars that could buy the unthinkable. From 1987, the Yankee sailors disappeared from our streets. Their place was taken by hordes of tourists, among whom some had visited the city before dressed in US Navy uniforms. But that long permanence of the Sixth Fleet in Barcelona had left its mark, and nothing was going to be the same.
--- Looking back a long way, how did the idea of writing about the Sixth Fleet in Barcelona come to you?
--- It started as a small chronicle for the newspaper El País, which later became a report, and finally a book. It stemmed from an epiphany, one night of drinks at the Kentucky bar in l'Arc del Teatre, a place that still preserved some memories of the Americans' passage through the city. My surprise was that nothing had been published about it; at that time, it was still a topic underestimated by local chronicles. That coincided with the 2008 crisis, which a year later swept away the press in this country. I was one of those affected, so I proposed to La Campana to write the book in exchange for an advance, and I dedicated myself exclusively to that for the following months. It was a passionate and exhausting experience at the same time, which I would not repeat.
--- In the book, you gather an extraordinary amount of information from books and the newspaper archives, with a huge number of interviews that include waiters from the era, prostitutes, American sailors, and various characters from the Barrio Chino. How long did it take you to complete the work?
--- A little over a year of full dedication. I started with the first characters I had already interviewed for El País, especially Manolo Pellicer, the owner of the Kentucky, who introduced me to the topic, and with the journalist Eladio Gutiérrez, who put me in touch with some of the best testimonies in the book. At the same time, I placed an advertisement on all the websites of associations of sailors from the United States Sixth Fleet, requesting memories, impressions, comments about their time in Barcelona. The response was enthusiastic; I received almost two hundred testimonies from all eras, from the first visit in 1951 to the last ones in the late eighties, where they talked about food, drink, music, loves, and fun.
--- Looking back: what would you say the Sixth Fleet brought that was good with its arrival in Barcelona?
--- The sailors brought money, a lot of money. And modernity, a lot of modernity. In a city where rationing cards were still in use, they seemed to arrive directly from Hollywood. With them, the American way of life was introduced: Coca-Cola, donuts, combo meals, Cheddar cheese and powdered milk, modern jazz, rock & roll and salsa, denim pants, nail clippers, Zippo lighters, even slip-style underwear. The places they frequented became a Mecca for the most restless spirits of the city, venues where music that wasn't played on national radios could be heard.
--- And what bad things did it bring?
--- The prolongation of Francoism, that exhausted and isolated entity after World War II, which thanks to the American friend survived three more decades. The United States sent the Sixth Fleet as a diplomatic vanguard to strengthen the Madrid Pacts of 1953. In exchange for installing military bases and bringing the dictatorship into the capitalist orbit, they provided cover for the Regime, which very soon joined international organizations like the UN, while also receiving the benefits of European growth in the form of trade and tourism.
--- For those who haven't read the book yet (and are already taking too long): of all the anecdotes you collect there, which are your favorites?
--- There are many anecdotes, the sailors were teenagers, often recruited in exchange for university scholarships, who arrived in the city with several full salaries in their pockets, after long voyages on ships where there were neither women nor alcohol. From the sailor who was locked in the restrooms of the California bar, and who was the only survivor of the accident that took the lives of 49 Americans in January 1977, to that of the drunk sailors who interrupted subway traffic in 1972, running through the tunnels; from the girl from the Collasso i Gil school in the Barrio Chino, whom the crew of the USS Marías oil tanker sponsored, to Mr. Fernández, who taught English to Barcelona prostitutes on the terrace of the Cosmos bar, so that they could understand their new clients.
--- In its day, the book was very successful, becoming a cult phenomenon as soon as it was born. Is it true that a documentary with the now deceased Francesc Betriu was planned based on it?
--- At Christmas 2010, the writer Juan Marsé acquired a few copies of my book and gave them to his friends. One of them was Francesc Betriu, with whom I met for two years working on the script for a documentary that did not find funding. It was the lowest point of the crisis and no one would shell out a penny, not even for a director with his prestige. Betriu was a sensational guy, we would meet at the now-defunct Can Pitarra and then have very long after-dinner conversations. We even fantasized about making a documentary about the terrible Count of Spain, a madman who was military governor of Barcelona during the reign of Ferdinand VII. Unfortunately, we did not manage to carry out those projects, but I have great memories of my friendship with him.
--- Apart from your work as a chronicler, you have ventured into narrative with the adventures of Captain Llampades, with La fada negra and the more recent Tothom ha de morir. When will we see the third part?
--- For now, this October I am presenting a new novel: Aquí no dorm ningú, also for La Campana. A story set in the Barrio Chino in 1933, which tells the adventures of a detective tasked with locating a well-to-do German teenager, in a city that never closes, among cocaine dealers, transvestite venues, clandestine car races, robber gangs, people fleeing Nazism and Nazis. "A thrilling story of love and bullets, in a city where no one sleeps." My idea is for this to be the first of a trilogy dedicated to the Fifth District, with a second part set in the fifties and a third in the eighties. As for the adventures of Captain Llampades, as you rightly say, I am writing the third part, which takes place in the factory town of Sants in the winter of 1849 to 1850. When I finish it, I will let you know. I can't say much more about it either, we are still getting to know each other.
--- Wow, all this sounds fabulous! Anything else to add?
--- In a few days, on September 21, I am offering a Sixth Fleet route through its natural settings, which will start and end in front of Drassanes within the Setmana del Llibre en Català. And I want to remind you that in mid-October Aquí no dorm ningú will appear in bookstores. Let's see what they think!