What is the great Barcelona novel? The writer Jordi Puntí affirms that Paris has Les miserables, by Victor Hugo; London identifies it with Bleak House, by Charles Dickens; and for New York he chooses Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow. He says so in the prologue of the commemorative edition of the 25th anniversary of the collection of stories by Sergi Pàmies La gran novel·la sobre Barcelona, which takes its name from the last of the fifteen stories.
In the same prologue, Puntí points out some possible great novels of Barcelona, such as Vida privada, by Josep Maria de Sagarra; The city of prodigies, by Eduardo Mendoza; Carrer de les Camèlies, by Mercè Rodoreda; and Last afternoons with Teresa, by Juan Marsé.
However, in the epilogue, Sergi Pàmies criticizes this literary game that he does not share and talks about all the authors underestimated between Sagarra and Casavella when choosing the great Barcelona novel.
Without encyclopedic or prescriptive spirit, today we begin this summer series about a few novels where the Rosa de Foc takes enough height to also become a relevant character. It goes without saying that Barcelona is a literary city in many of the senses of this expression, both within the plots of the books and on the pages where the publishers that publish them appear.
World capital of publishing in Catalan and Spanish, Barcelona has now won a new literary recognition, the Santa Eulàlia novel award, organized by Àfora Focus and the Comanegra publishing house, which has as its requirements that Barcelona be present in the story and that it be written in Catalan.
Thus, in this 2022 this new award and the 25 years of that Pàmies story come together, which, in 29 pages, summarizes the history of the city from its first settlers and connects it with a typescript that the author has left forgotten in a taxi, and that recovers thanks to the municipal office of lost objects, or "found", as it is called now.
But in a novel by Pàmies there is nothing that runs in a straight line or, at least, in the line that the reader can foresee, and in the history of this typescript –of the times when typewriting was done and when a writer , if I lost the original, I lost everything– singular characters intervene, such as the employee of the found objects office and his wife, who read the manuscript avidly.
In the compilation La gran novel·la sobre Barcelona there are more stories, with the unmistakable stamp of its author, such as that of an anonymous abstainer (La set), that of the man who, since it is Sunday and he is bored, decides to become homosexual (La classical music), that of the supermarket buyer who meets Virginia Woolf (The shopping list), or the last trip of the driver who retires (La próxima estació).
Starting today, every summer Saturday we will talk to you about the great novels of Barcelona, but to begin with we have considered that this story by Sergi Pàmies, together with many others of his and also by his contemporary Quim Monzó, make up a fantastic puzzle that, once solved, it can perfectly draw the Cerdà plan.
Catalan version, here
