Barcelona was the city of Gabriel García Márquez for eight years, from 1967 to 1975, politically gray times but culturally seething in the city of wonders. The Mediterranean home of the Colombian Nobel Prize winner, who died in 2014, now pays tribute to him with a reference library, in the Sant Martí district, in the Verneda neighborhood.
The Gabriel García Márquez library is the third largest in the city (3,300 m2), with an investment of 11.3 million euros, and is specialized in Latin American literature. It will also host the collection of cartoonist Francisco Ibáñez, father of Mortadelo and Filemón and a resident of Sant Martí, who attended the inauguration yesterday.
Throughout the day, a series of cultural and festive events celebrated the opening of this new cultural focus of the city. Some of the neighbors took the opportunity to get their card and borrow the first books of the 40,000 that fill the shelves of this diaphanous building, the work of the architects Elena Orte and Guillermo Sevillano, from the Suma Arquitectura studio. The works of the creator of Macondo, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude or The Colonel has no one to write to him, can be read in various languages and editions.
The library has the latest advances, an attractive children's room, Habitació de les Sensacions, and also a radio station, Ràdio Maconda, a community radio of the Xarxa de Biblioteques of the Diputació de Barcelona, so that, beyond the books, the equipment becomes a neighborhood meeting point. Located on Calle del Treball, 219, corner with Concili de Trento, a bust of the writer, the work of Colombian sculptor Óscar Noriega, smiles sweetly at visitors.
At yesterday's inauguration, attended by Minister Joan Subirats and the director of the new library, Neus Castellano, Mayor Ada Colau announced her ambition for the library to be a new pole of attraction for the city and also "a nerve center of the civic and cultural life of the neighbourhood.
“We have to defend that freedom is not the capitalism of every man for himself. Freedom is that there is a library like the García Márquez in all the neighborhoods of Barcelona”, he said in his speech. And he also addressed the children: “I am addressing you, boys and girls. This library is yours. It will make you powerful. So use it every day."
From June 16 to 19, the brand new García Márquez library will celebrate the first edition of the new Latin American literature festival in Barcelona, KM América, with the participation of 22 writers. And here are the news from Macondo.
