When you wait for someone in Barcelona's Plaza Catalunya, you often do so in front of the Francesc Macià monument. Many people do not know that Subirachs' sculpture “appears in the film adaptation of Mecanoscrit of the second origin of Manuel de Pedrolo,” says the writer Inés Macpherson, who these days, within the framework of the 42 festival, is taking a route reclaiming the authors who write fantasy genres.
“From the outset, no one would put Mercè Rodoreda on this itinerary. We always study her as a costumbrista author but she has many stories full of mythological and horror elements, as can be seen in the stories of Viatges i flors", which has the occasional scene on La Rambla. “Her unfinished novel The Death and Spring also has a lot of symbolism, since butterflies represent souls.”
On his route, Macpherson stops at the Barcelonès University, because there is the Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC), created by Jaume Fuster, "one of the referents of epic fantasy in our country with works like L'illa of the three oranges. Don't forget Avellí Artís ('Tísner') and his Words of Opòton the old man who plays with apocryphal speculation"; nor of Antoni Munné-Jordà and his revisiting of the Iliad with Michelíada, "the person from Catalonia who knows best about fantastic genres".
Along the way, the dragons—like the one on the façade of Casa Bruno Cuadros—come to light. “In Metal·lúrgia, the protagonists are dragons exploited by the system” and Carlos Ruiz Zafón, to whom he dedicates a full stop in the Arc del Teatre for his Cemetery of Forgotten Books, “had a collection of these beings.”
When you pass the Cafè de l'Opera, Pep Albanell and El barcelonauta come out, because its protagonist ends up there after chasing a thief. "A journey that reminds me of what Gurb does for Barcelona", he reflects, referring to Eduardo Mendoza's eccentric Sin noticias de Gurb. "I'm sure he was looking for the Wax Museum, a place that invites terror" and in which a scene from L'horror de requiem, by Marc Pastor, takes place.
Julio Cortázar had just as bad a time as a child. He “would wake up with nightmares because he said he saw strange shapes. He was referring to the waves of La Pedrera, which had remained engraved in him,” says Machperson from the Amaya restaurant, “where he met with authors of the boom,” such as Gabo, “a reference to magical realism.” The other foreigner on the route is Orwell, author of 1984, who during the Civil War “was at the Teatre Poliorama.”
And between Drassanes and the port, stories from the book Barcelona 2059 are told, Nicolau's transmutation from boy to fish, by Antoni Veciana, is remembered, and La pell freda, by Sánchez Piñol, is admired. "They are wonderful works".
