It takes effort, but it can be done. Living outside of football is possible. Society admits (sometimes) people who do not know the difference between a classic and a derby or ignore the names of players, coaches and other characters that swarm the football universe. But no matter how hard he tries, the ghost of soccer always ends up trapping even the most cautious.
"I don't like football, it doesn't entertain me," admits Enric Calpena, although he confesses that he was a member of Espanyol as a child because his father signed up for him. And yet, the journalist has succumbed to the influence of football and has written a novel about the history of Barça during the Civil War. Calpena presents En guerra (Edicions 62) at the Casa del Libro with Lluís Foix, who is indeed a fan. So much so that when I was young "I got on my bike and traveled 12 kilometers from my town to Tárrega to be able to watch a game on television in black and white."
You don't have to be as much a Barcelona fan as Foix to be interested in En guerra because, although it's about football, it's still a historical novel and Calpena is very clear that reading it is a way of learning about the past: "The appearance of mass sport is one of the elements that explain the 20th century”.
Francesc Jufresa's gathering seems like a great plan, because it is prestigious and well attended, because it is being held for the first time at the Círculo Ecuestre and because the guest is John Carlin, journalist and contributor to La Vanguardia. Carlin has published The Future Is What It Was (, but it turns out he's the only writer in the world who doesn't go to a public event to talk about his book. His talk is about... football.
Carlin starts talking about when he arrived in Barcelona, where he now lives, to interview the Barça coach at the time, Bobby Robson. He tells about Leo Messi and Florentino Pérez, because he also knows about Madrid, and things like that. But he suddenly declares: “Barcelona is the best city in the world to live. With what other can it be compared? And María José Matamoros answers: “With Barcelona”. Discussion is encouraged. Carlin maintains that those who defend pre-Colau Barcelona are “nostalgic”. A few gatherings support Matamoros and the atmosphere heats up.
Someone returns to the topic of football to calm things down. Until Norbert Bilbeny, also a columnist for La Vanguardia, asks about "what is the idiosyncrasy of the Catalans" and the gathering heats up again. A lot. Carlin says that the Catalans are "the most unpopular in Spain, the ones who fall the worst." A woman from Valencia and an Argentine man defend the Catalans and Óscar Tusquets finishes off the play and scores the goal: "I have never been underestimated in the rest of Spain."
In the end, Jufresa's gathering was worth it, but to overcome the football overdose and reconcile with reality there is nothing better than literature, good literature. Chufo Llorens and his wife, Cristina Barbat, invite the press to eat at Casa Pepe because Llorens has published a new novel, The Life That Separates Us (Grijalbo / Rosa dels Vents).
It tells the story of Mariana, who at the beginning of the 60s and just turned 18, wants a very famous rejoneador. Her parents don't like him, because he is older than the girl and separated. She gives him goosebumps and marries Sergio Lozano, a boy her age with whom she has four children. But the husband turns out to be a disaster with money and is forced to flee to Mexico when he finds out that he owes half of Barcelona money.
The life that separates us is one of those hooking novels, which is a shame to end. A delicious book, as is the conversation between Llorens and Barbat. The writer tells anecdotes, some somewhat spicy, from when he was a businessman at night and ran the Don Chufo nightclub. And he ends up reassuring the thousands of his readers: at 91 he still has at least one new novel to write, "that of a man who, when his time comes, reviews his life."
