[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” module_class=”flex flex-column hero” _builder_version=”4.22.1″ background_image=”https:\/\/vazquezmontalban.bnc.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/hero_barcelona-scaled.jpg” custom_padding=”12em||3em||false|false” background_last_edited=”on|phone” background_image_phone=”https:\/\/vazquezmontalban.bnc.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/hero-barcelona_res.jpg” background_enable_image_phone=”on” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ make_equal=”on” _builder_version=”4.22.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” header_text_color=”#F8F9F2″ header_font_size=”3em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”serif” _builder_version=”4.22.2″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#F8F9F2″ text_font_size=”2em” animation_style=”fade” saved_tabs=”all” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
Text and selection of content: Mari Paz Balibrea [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row disabled_on=”on|on|on” _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” disabled=”on” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#020B11″ global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Barcelona is the main setting of the works and life of Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n, the place where he was born and always lived and the nerve centre of his creative imagination, intellectual life and sentimental education. His creative work and essays contribute to an urban history of the experience and cultural and ethical history of the Barcelona classes without History, from where he sprang, bound up mainly with his birthplace in the Barrio Chino<\/em> (its red-light district). From the turn of the [20th] century until the Second Republic, this area of Barcelona is a key actor in his works in the development of the vanguards, the class struggle and the possibility of living with fewer inhibitions. When this possibility disappeared at the end of the Civil War, and during the harshest phase of a Franco regime that could only be resisted symbolically, that miserable Barcelona became a refuge for the dignity of those on the losing side.<\/p>\n Very critical of the Transition and the first socialist governments, it is in Barcelona where the author most rigorously and systematically pursued the betrayals and disappointments of a hegemony that advocated forgetting the past as essential and neo-liberal capitalism as desirable.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#020B11″ link_font=”||||on||||” link_text_color=”#020B11″ global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n The transformations in its Barrio Chino red-light district and the 1992 Olympic Games take pride of place. The economics of these transformations met with one of V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n’s sharpest materialist critiques.<\/p>\n His essays, journalistic and literary works are an essential contribution to the social, cultural, political and sentimental history of the city in the twentieth century. Therefore, as a citizen, V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n\u2019s presence in the streets and his participation in the civic life of Barcelona were constant throughout his life. The esteem in which he was held by the city\u2019s inhabitants gives us the measure the reaction to his unexpected death. Today they remember him with his name in the metropolitan area of Barcelona; a square, a civic centre, and a high school, are named after him, in addition to the crime novel prize Pepe Carvalho<\/a>, the protagonist of his detective series<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/vazquezmontalban.bnc.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/4.-Barcelona_A-la-Placa-del-Padro-scaled.jpg” title_text=”4. Barcelona_A la Plac\u0327a del Padro\u0301” _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”peu_foto” _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#020B11″ text_font_size=”0.9em” custom_margin=”||||false|false” animation_style=”fade” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n A la Pla\u00e7a del Pedr\u00f3 de Barcelona, entre 1980 i 1990 aprox. Foto: Guillermina Puig<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/vazquezmontalban.bnc.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/4.-Barcelona_Institut-Manuel-Vazquez-Montalban.jpg” title_text=”4. Barcelona_Institut Manuel Vazquez Montalba\u0301n” _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”peu_foto” _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#020B11″ text_font_size=”0.9em” custom_margin=”||||false|false” animation_style=”fade” custom_css_main_element=”position:relative;||margin-top:-4em” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Institut Manuel Vazquez Montalb\u00e1n<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/vazquezmontalban.bnc.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/4.Placa-MVM.jpg” title_text=”4.Plac\u0327a MVM” _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”3em||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”peu_foto” _builder_version=”4.22.1″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#020B11″ text_font_size=”0.9em” custom_margin=”||||false|false” animation_style=”fade” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Pla\u00e7a Manuel Vazquez Montalb\u00e1n<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text module_class=”seleccio_textos_title” _builder_version=”4.22.2″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_color=”#020B11″ header_2_font_size=”4em” custom_margin=”||-21px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#020B11″ locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n A variegated territory of clandestinity and marginality, where the affective, artistic and political expressions repressed by the bien-pensant and bourgeois Barcelona coexist, we find their traces scattered throughout Montalban\u2019s work, from essays to narrative and musicals<\/p>\n \u201cAt the Apolo or the Arnau, on Paral\u00b7lel, what is now being called the \u201cfrivolous genre\u201d triumphed, with legendary canzontistas, vocalists, such as Bella Chelito, Bella Dorita or Raquel Meyer, muse of the erotic dreams of generations of Barcelonians.\u201d (Barcelonas<\/em>, Barcelona: Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, 2018, p.183)<\/p>\n \u201cThe name [Chinatown] also makes sense as an extension of the concept of a forbidden neighbourhood, because of its status as a territory for the underworld and the lumpen. Barcelona\u2019s Chinatown invaded Escudillers street and its surroundings, like a criminal brand, but its heart was and is on the other side of the Rambla, between Drassanes, Paral\u00b7lel and Hospital street. There, whores and working-class families, queer employees and union members of the newborn socialist and communist formations, women\u2019s prisons and Basque gables, condom shops and furniture smelling of disinfectant and English, beach bars selling fine and generous wines with cazalla or barrecha (cazada and muscatel), one of the first cultural syntheses of the connection between the Catalan people and the emigrants, all mixed together.\u201d (Barcelonas<\/em>, Barcelona: Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, 2018, p. 188)<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the Church of Carmen. It was built after the Tragic Week, on the site of a former Hieronymite convent that was burnt down by the revolutionaries. (El pianista<\/em>, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 33)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cScene VIII Patrick:<\/strong> (Flor de nit<\/em> \/ text Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n, sobre una idea de Dagoll Dagom; m\u00fasica Albert Guinovart. Alicante : Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2000, p. 60-62.https:\/\/www.cervantesvirtual.com\/obra\/flor-de-nit-multimedia–0\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n \u201cScene XII Pons:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong> Quimet, Pons: <\/strong> Isadora:<\/strong> (Flor de nit<\/em> \/ text Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n, sobre una idea de Dagoll Dagom; m\u00fasica Albert Guinovart. Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2000, p. 60-62. https:\/\/www.cervantesvirtual.com\/obra\/flor-de-nit-multimedia–0\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div> The author\u2019s assessment of Franco\u2019s entry into Barcelona and its effects leaves no room for doubt:<\/p>\n \u201cRepression was fierce, relentless, merciless.\u201d (Barcelonas<\/em>. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2018, p. 243)<\/p>\n \u201cThe mood against this background went through ideological neighbourhoods, although it increasingly translated into economic situations: the established Barcelona, with the exception of the culturally nationalist areas, became Francoist to a greater or lesser degree; the other Barcelona ate its own memory or adapted its metabolism to the ingestion of toads and stood firm at dusk, when the flag was lowered in the barracks, profusely scattered around the city, and woe betide anyone who did not stand firm with arms raised at the sound of silence! Once again there was a dual consciousness […]: the city that survived and pretended not to be aware of the shots being fired, of the queues outside the Modelo [prison], of the systematic destruction of its own identity.\u201d (Barcelonas<\/em>. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2018, p. 249)<\/p>\n His poems delved into the expression of the experience of that \u201cother\u201d losing Barcelona:<\/p>\n \u201cO city of terror fear was a presence \u201cDefinitely nothing left of April Symbolic resistance and solidarity remain to counter the terror and misery in these defeated neighbourhoods:<\/p>\n \u201cGet out of this shitty country and start thriving. […] Either you go or you burst. Sometimes I look over to that side, the one that points towards Calle de la Cera and the Padr\u00f3 cinema, and I imagine I\u2019m up here with a machine gun and all the fascists in Spain pass through that street and ratatatatatata, I don\u2019t leave a single one and it feels good to let off steam. If you ever see me get up there and machine-gun with my mouth, don\u2019t pay me any attention. I\u2019m letting off steam.\u201d (El pianista<\/em>, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 107)<\/p>\n \u201cThe boy circles around a sleeping dog that from time to time opens one eye to watch the bicycle\u2019s intentions. \u201cThe other day a poor woman came in, full of shit, pardon me, she was carrying a child and asked for something to eat. Without opening the door, I told her through the peep hole to go to the stairs and wait. I saw them sitting on the stairs and I opened the door a little, just enough to put a plate of rice on the floor with a spoon. I closed the door again and through the peep hole I saw them eating it. They left the plate and spoon in the same place and when I was sure they had gone, I went out and retrieved the plate. It was a case of need and they were very hungry, very hungry to eat that rice, because it had been in the cooler for several days and it smelled a bit. It had turned out really good.\u201d (El pianista<\/em>, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 117-118)<\/p>\n \u201cI told you that the bookseller in Atarazanas was beginning to trust me. Then he told me that, first of all, he always puts the clients in isolation, lest they become police accomplices. The other day, an old bookseller in Hospital Street was caught with Blasco Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez\u2019s La ara\u00f1a negra<\/em> and Nietzsche\u2019s As\u00ed hablaba Zarathustra<\/em> and was taken to [the police station on] V\u00eda Layetana.\u201d (El pianista<\/em>, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p.125)<\/p>\n V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n was also extremely critical of the great urban transformations in Barcelona which, with Franco\u2019s developmentalism, changed its appearance in the 50s under the leadership of Mayor Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda de Porcioles:<\/p>\n \u201cPorciolism set loose the fervour of growth. It led to an empire of repressive urbanism based on the city as a place for transit (the faster the better), as a basis for a construction industry that was attractive enough for the development of an urban capitalism. This all led to the destruction of a city made of pleasant spots, a city that was a place to be, to stroll, to interact with others, etc. Porciolism is the maximum representation of a repressive urbanism of anti-communication. […] After the Spanish Civil War, what Oriol Bohigas calls \u2018black market architecture\u2019 found its fundamental political element in Mr Porcioles, and particularly in Porciolism as an urban philosophy.\u201d (Di\u00e0legs a Barcelona. Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n y Jaume Fuster<\/em>. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1985, p. 54-56)<\/p>\n \u201c…All of a sudden, in the late 1950s and early 1960, it [Cornell\u00e0, Santa Coloma, Sant Vicen\u00e7 dels Horts] was all invaded by horrible blocks of buildings. Of course people needed a place to live, but according to what criteria? Savage criteria. The people who went there to live paid a huge price in their way of life, with psychological, social and personal problems of all sorts.\u201d (Barcelona, cap a on vas? Di\u00e0legs per a una altra Barcelona. Eduard Moreno i Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n<\/em>. Barcelona: Llibres de l\u2019\u00cdndex, 1991, p. 85-86)<\/p>\n \u201c…the Barcelona of Porcioles, that vast impersonal car park.\u201d (Barcelonas<\/em>, Barcelona: Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, 2018, p. 350)<\/p>\n V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n confirmed that the anti-Francoist work of the Asociaciones de Vecinos (Neighbourhood Associations) was fundamental against porciolismo:<\/p>\n \u201cBarcelona […] already had a critical, political and ideological brew that was quite strong in the 1960s. And what was its outlet? The neighbourhood associations. […] This was one of the most important cultural phenomena in all of Spain: the appearance of an urban critique in the Barcelona of the late 1960s and early 1970s tied to these movements.\u201d (Barcelona, cap a on vas? Di\u00e0legs per a una altra Barcelona. Eduard Moreno i Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n<\/em>. Barcelona: Llibres de l\u2019\u00cdndex, 1991, p. 42)<\/p>\n<\/div> A central element of Montalban\u2019s vision of this period is his critique of how the politicians who led the transition from dictatorship to democracy agreed to grant impunity for the crimes of Francoism and to limit the much more ambitious demands of the anti-Franco left to a framework of liberal capitalist democracy. There are frequent characters within the pages of his work who are political actors with a left-wing past that had a change of heart or went back to their parents\u2019 house.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2014It\u2019s funny. At almost every table a familiar face. The generation in power: between thirty-five and forty-five years old. Those who knew how to stop being Francoists in time and those who knew how to be anti-Francoists in the right measure or at the right time.\u201d (El pianista<\/em>, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 57)<\/p>\n \u201c[…] we created a fight that we didn\u2019t make. Francoism lasted as long as it had to last, and it overrode what we called our fight. \u201c\u2014And you, what? Although V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n\u2019s criticism is Spanish in scope, it is often embodied in characters from Barcelona, as in the cases cited above from El pianista<\/em>. Thus, this criticism is very well articulated with the city in his work, thanks to the author\u2019s extensive knowledge of the socio-economic and urban realities of Barcelona:<\/p>\n \u201cI should acknowledge that there have been some programs aimed at recuperating free space within the city, particularly in the most densely populated areas. The opening of the city towards the sea through the Moll de la Fusta and other initiatives represent a certain attempt to recover public space. I\u2019ve also noticed an effort to restore neighbourhood culture, neighbourhood identity. This was a very positive achievement of democracy. However, we are part of a market, and speculation cannot be fought within this framework. The city may have a more advanced, democratic policy of urban culture, but it\u2019s set within the framework of the free market. As a result, developers have the law on their side.\u201d (Di\u00e0legs a Barcelona. Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n y Jaume Fuster<\/em>. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1985, p. 56)<\/p>\n \u201cThe installation of socialists in municipal power allowed many intellectuals and critical professionals from the previous period to stop thinking about the city in order to make it, to enter the temple of actual management, and the impact between reality and desire forced a pragmatic synthesis, favoured – and induced – by dismantling the critical conscience represented by the neighbourhood movement.\u201d (Barcelonas<\/em>, Barcelona: Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, 2018, p. 334-335)<\/p>\n \u201cWhat worries me at the end of this theoretical trip (on their part, more ideological than theoretical) is alienation. In other words, I think that at the moment they believe what they\u2019re saying because they need to believe in it. If not, they would have to undergo such a harsh process of self-criticism that it would put a great many things in question. Therefore, they would rather say that there were no other options. And since there\u2019s no way to demonstrate it, this is the problem with the opposition between pragmatic individuals and those who are accused of being utopian. Pragmatic individuals can say: \u201cWe did this\u201d, but utopian individuals have to say: \u201cGo look at the newspaper archives to see what we said at the time.\u201d That\u2019s a constant failure. Now nobody will ever think about what that city could have been like. Nobody will be able to consider it, because, of course, it\u2019s an unequal struggle between pragmatic individuals and critical individuals.\u201d (Barcelona, cap a on vas? Di\u00e0legs per a una altra Barcelona. Eduard Moreno i Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n<\/em>. Barcelona: Llibres de l\u2019\u00cdndex, 1991, p. 66)<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m quite concerned about the hugs Maragall and Pujol give Porcioles […], accepting the systematic destruction of the city that Porciolism represented. […] I\u2019d like to know whether those hugs represent a shared philosophy or a shared vision for the city: the Great Barcelona.\u201d (Di\u00e0legs a Barcelona. Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n y Jaume Fuster<\/em>. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1985, p. 54)<\/p>\n<\/div> V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n said that his homeland was his childhood, the space-time of a poor Barcelona neighbourhood of losers in the first post-war period. References to it run through his bibliography, marked by nostalgia, a tone of vindictive tribute and criticism of an urbanism that despises the imprint of the past in the city.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was even a custom \u2013I remember this from my childhood, since I lived in the 5th<\/sup> district\u2013 where strolling on Sundays meant walking up and down the Rondes, the Paral\u00b7lel and the Rambla. We never left this circuit, because beyond it stood the Eixample, another territory that belonged to another social sector.\u201d (Barcelona, cap a on vas? Di\u00e0legs per a una altra Barcelona. Eduard Moreno i Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n<\/em>. Barcelona: Llibres de l\u2019\u00cdndex, 1991, p. 15-16)<\/p>\n \u201cThe boiling citizen of the Rambla during the transition, who got drunk at Can Boadas and drank horchata at the Caf\u00e9 de l\u2019\u00d2pera, was replaced [in the 80s] by a solitary Rambla, at night, the setting for the most sordid searches, for the saddest flesh or for hard or soft drugs or the whole range of flaccid, censored and uncensored drugs.\u201d (Barcelonas<\/em>, Barcelona: Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, 2018, p. 330)<\/p>\n \u201cIf ever […] you come to this square [Pedr\u00f3] and it survives, because in the past it was threatened by the creation of another Via Laietana that from Colom to Carrer de Muntaner would sweep away the dark memory of the poor city, I ask you to leave a real or imaginary yellow rose in the fountain, a tribute to the dead that only I remember or only I imagine, who were happy here listening to Clav\u00e9\u2019s choir concerts or to the municipal band led by the reprised Lamote de Grignon. Dead people who precede or exceed me, who have not had their chronicle or their hagiographers, buried forever in the common grave of time […] Pre-modern dead who waited uselessly for the consummation of Everything.\u201d (Barcelonas<\/em>, Barcelona: Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, 2018, p. 350-351)<\/p>\n \u201c…there\u2019s no auditory record left. Once I had to write a radio script on the Barcelona of the period [the 1940s] and I asked the station if they had any recordings of the sound of the trams. They didn\u2019t. And the cries out in the street, the old men singing Machaquito<\/em> or Ros\u00f3, llum de la meva vida<\/em>… We need a museum of sound; maybe someone has recorded it. The dustman blowing his horn, the sound of a cart\u2019s wheels on the cobblestones. […] There were more smells […] the smell of boiling cabbage was typical; there was the smell of porridge, the smell of the oils which, back in those days, weren\u2019t as refined as they are now. The smell of things frying back in those days could be horrible. Some neighbourhoods stunk of frying. There was a mythology surrounding chicken. That scoundrel Bofarull contributed to it; he owned the restaurant Los Caracoles on Carrer Escudellers. When there was famine, queues of people would form to watch the chickens turn as they were roasted on the street corner. One of the things to do on Sunday was to go to Los Caracoles to see the chickens turning as they were roasted. \u00bb (Di\u00e0legs a Barcelona. Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n y Jaume Fuster<\/em>. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1985, p. 35, 39)<\/p>\n \u201cI did not choose to be born among you \u201cChestnut souffl\u00e9. He had bought them out of ritual and nostalgia, in memory of those times his mother roasted chestnuts with an old leaky frying pan, still on the fire of mediocre post-war charcoal or coal dust balls, in the light of carbide, still blindly electric, in that district of the old city now threatened by the good and bad intentions of post-modernity. And next to the chestnuts roasted in a converted frying pan, the sweet potato panellets, the only raw material for confectionery available to all Spaniards. My memories will not survive me, Carvalho said to himself… \u201d (El laberinto griego<\/em>. Barcelona: Planeta, 1991, p. 115).<\/p>\n \u201cAnd in Barcelona\u2019s metamorphosis there was like an exercise of relentless sadism to even destroy the cemeteries of his memory, the physical space where the protagonists of his memories could reside. In Bromuro\u2019s longing […] the survival of the physical space in which he used to find the old man, bars, street corners, the miserable boarding house where he lived, now threatened by the demolition of part of Chinatown, played a key role.\u201d (El laberinto griego<\/em>. Barcelona: Planeta, 1991, p. 132).<\/p>\n \u201cCasa Leopoldo was the mythical restaurant in Chinatown that Carvalho would go to when he felt nostalgic for the country of his childhood, when he was a miserable little prince in the post-war country<\/em>. […]The neighbourhood had been pasteurised. The pickaxe began demolishing entire blocks and the lost whores without collars were left without fronts on which to rest their arses during the long waits for economically and psychologically disadvantaged patrons […] It was important that the Olympic voyeur did not take with him from Barcelona the image of sex with varicose veins and inadequate deodorants.\u201d (Sabotaje Ol\u00edmpico<\/em>. Barcelona: Planeta, 1993, p. 72)<\/p>\n<\/div> The author was highly critical of the Games, which he saw as an excuse to trigger the neo liberalisation of a city turned into a commercial brand for sale to global tourists, thus abandoning the democratic demands associated with the neighbourhood movements of the late Franco era and the early stages of the transition. As well as expressing himself in evaluations of considerable analytical acuity, irony, mockery and sarcasm in the face of euphoric construction and the quasi-absolute social consensus surrounding the Games were constant in his treatment of the subject.<\/p>\n \u201c…then the announcement of the Olympics came, which meant undoing any plans for balanced growth. It meant expanding the city according to Olympic needs: creating a road network for rapid communication, and growth towards the Maresme, towards the sea. This wasn\u2019t for the famous conquest of the sea as a poetic achievement, but to conquer the land that would become the Olympic Village, with urban planning conditioned by this need. This also meant that the growth of the city would benefit the part of the city that housed the so-called \u2018Olympic\u2019 games. […] The social and cultural graft of the Olympic Village into its setting (beside the Poble Nou, a few metres away from La Mina, the Bes\u00f3s neighbourhoods, etc.) meant that speculation spread out from there.\u201d (Barcelona, cap a on vas? Di\u00e0legs per a una altra Barcelona. Eduard Moreno i Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n<\/em>. Barcelona: Llibres de l\u2019\u00cdndex, 1991, p. 59-60)<\/p>\n \u201c[The Olympics] ended up undoing any capacity for resistance or containment that the authorities could have had, even if it seemed like they controlled this process.\u201d (Barcelona, cap a on vas? Di\u00e0legs per a una altra Barcelona. Eduard Moreno i Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n<\/em>. Barcelona: Llibres de l\u2019\u00cdndex, 1991, p. 72)<\/p>\n \u201cThe Olympic, Pre-Olympic, Trans-Olympic and Post-Olympic Office employed the once less Olympic people of this world […]: from Marxist-Leninism to democratic institutional management and finally to prepare all the Olympics that Spanish democracy would have in 1992: the Fifth Centenary of the Discovery of America, the Seville International Fair, the Olympics, Madrid as the cultural capital of Europe. Those who have not spent half an hour of their lives preparing for the revolution will never know how it feels to find themselves years later prefabricating Olympus and triumphant podiums for athletes of sport, business and industry.\u201d (El laberinto griego<\/em>. Barcelona: Planeta, 1991, p.32).<\/p>\n \u201cAnd Nova Ic\u00e0ria [a street in the Olympic Village] could be that, a parody of a phalanstery\u2013a phalanstery for the well-to-do, of course. Soon, another initiative might be, for example, a Communist City built by N\u00fa\u00f1ez i Navarro with a whole series of attractions: from an internal gulag for people to spend time in to a \u2018cheka\u2019 and an opportunity for people to assault the Winter Palace. All sponsored by the Walt Disney Company.\u201d (Barcelona, cap a on vas? Di\u00e0legs per a una altra Barcelona. Eduard Moreno i Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n<\/em>. Barcelona: Llibres de l\u2019\u00cdndex, 1991, p. 105-106)<\/p>\n \u201c…eventually, to move certain projects forward, the City Council abandons its dominion over municipal terrain. All in exchange for compensations that, at the end of the day, don\u2019t hide the fact that the people doing business are the same as always […] In exchange for a small parcel of green space in the city, they\u2019ll earn profits of 1,300 million pesetas.\u201d (Barcelona, cap a on vas? Di\u00e0legs per a una altra Barcelona. Eduard Moreno i Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n<\/em>. Barcelona: Llibres de l\u2019\u00cdndex, 1991, p. 116)<\/p>\n \u201cA city occupied by people disguised as healthy can end up being unbearable, particularly if, due to the Olympic Games, the city has undergone cosmetic surgery and important wrinkles of the past have been eliminated from its face.\u201d (Sabotaje Ol\u00edmpico<\/em>. Barcelona: Planeta, 1993, p. 12)<\/p>\n<\/div> A variegated territory of clandestinity and marginality, where the affective, artistic and political expressions repressed by the bien-pensant and bourgeois Barcelona coexist, we find their traces scattered throughout Montalban\u2019s work, from essays to narrative and musicals<\/p>\n \u201cAt the Apolo or the Arnau, on Paral\u00b7lel, what is now being called the \u201cfrivolous genre\u201d triumphed, with legendary canzontistas, vocalists, such as Bella Chelito, Bella Dorita or Raquel Meyer, muse of the erotic dreams of generations of Barcelonians.\u201d (Barcelonas<\/em>, Barcelona: Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, 2018, p.183)<\/p>\n \u201cThe name [Chinatown] also makes sense as an extension of the concept of a forbidden neighbourhood, because of its status as a territory for the underworld and the lumpen. Barcelona\u2019s Chinatown invaded Escudillers street and its surroundings, like a criminal brand, but its heart was and is on the other side of the Rambla, between Drassanes, Paral\u00b7lel and Hospital street. There, whores and working-class families, queer employees and union members of the newborn socialist and communist formations, women\u2019s prisons and Basque gables, condom shops and furniture smelling of disinfectant and English, beach bars selling fine and generous wines with cazalla or barrecha (cazada and muscatel), one of the first cultural syntheses of the connection between the Catalan people and the emigrants, all mixed together.\u201d (Barcelonas<\/em>, Barcelona: Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, 2018, p. 188)<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the Church of Carmen. It was built after the Tragic Week, on the site of a former Hieronymite convent that was burnt down by the revolutionaries. (El pianista<\/em>, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 33)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cScene VIII Patrick:<\/strong> (Flor de nit<\/em> \/ text Manuel V\u00e1zquez Montalb\u00e1n, sobre una idea de Dagoll Dagom; m\u00fasica Albert Guinovart. Alicante : Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2000, p. 60-62.https:\/\/www.cervantesvirtual.com\/obra\/flor-de-nit-multimedia–0\/<\/a>)<\/p>\nPatrimoni cultural<\/em><\/h2>\n
Selection of texts<\/h2>\n
\n<\/strong>Panorama of the Paral\u00b7lel in the 1920s. Reynals, Patrick and Arrufat come into view in black tie, top hats, etc. They are quite drunk.<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m confused
\nIn awe,
\nHorrified,
\nOvercome,
\nSplitting my sides,
\nBlown away,
\nI\u2019m just
\nIn love with
\nThis city.
\nOn the same day, in the
\nSame place,
\nI met
\nA drunk dictator
\nWho didn\u2019t dictate a thing.
\nAn Andalusian who\u2019s a
\nA mad painter
\nFrom the Empord\u00e0
\nWho, right in front of me,
\nMasturbated
\nInto an envelope
\nAnd sent
\nThe results
\nTo his father
\nSaying: I don\u2019t owe you
\nA thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Quimet\u2019s attic […]<\/p>\n
\nAre you guys
\nReally anarchists?
\nOr are you regional
\nNationalists?
\nOur final
\nStruggle
\nMust be
\nInternational
\nFor the victory of the
\nProletariat!<\/p>\n
\nNo more kings,
\nAnd we still have a king.<\/p>\n
\nAnd no more clients,
\nAnd we still have clients.
\nNo more gods…
\nRevolution!\u201d<\/p>\n
\namong the livid avenues
\nautumn trees
\nthe invaders
\nshot records
\ndrunk with barbaric memory
\nfed up with flesh humiliated
\nand offended<\/p>\n
\nsilence its shroud
\nwords hidden in things
\nideas in the eyes
\ncontemplated
\nthe division between the one who dies and the one who kills\u201d (Praga<\/em>. Barcelona: Lumen, 1982, p. 15)<\/p>\n
\nthe cruellest month, poor Rosa de Abril
\ndrawn with death – hypothesis of death –
\nbetween my hands your cold face confirmed
\nthe silence to which you bring my memory
\nthe memory of my childhood and your post-war
\nyour youth assaulted by the dogs of History
\nmy youth assaulted by your instinct of life
\nred Rosa […] \u201d (Pero el viajero que huye<\/em>. Madrid: Visor, 1991, p. 59)<\/p>\n
\n\u2014Here on the roof he enjoys himself and frees himself from all the shit that the nuns put in his head. My brother-in-law has balls. Red for life. Prison. And he goes and puts my little boy in a school run by the nuns of San Vicente de Pa\u00fal, by the Savings Bank, because it\u2019s free, and for the time being, for what they teach him… Well, they teach him to pray. And do you know what book they\u2019ve given him to read at home? Fabiola<\/em>. A book about martyrs, priests and Romans. I ask Young who Fabiola is, baby.
\n\u2014A bad whore.\u201d (El pianista<\/em>, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 109)<\/p>\n
\n\u2014But at least we helped to raise democratic awareness.
\n\u2014As well as Opus initiating the Stabilisation Plan in nineteen fifty-seven and then Economic Development.
\n\u2014And banning Last Tango in Paris<\/em>.
\n\u2014But allowing the bourgeoisie to queue up in cars all the way to Perpignan to see Marlon Brando\u2019s bottom. It was a perfectly assumed dual attitude. Instead, we went forward with the battering ram to demolish the Bastille fortress and we didn\u2019t demolish anything.
\n\u2014Delapierre, you who are an actor, lecture Joan not to be so revisionist. Revisionists block my brain.
\n\u2014Joan isn\u2019t a revisionist. She has simply grown up.[…]
\n\u2014There is a time to make a mistake and time to discover the reason why. But I don\u2019t regret anything I\u2019ve done.\u201d (El pianista<\/em>, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 56)<\/p>\n
\n\u2014Me? What about?
\n\u2014Politically, boy. I offer an explanation of the correlation of forces present. Joan and Merc\u00e8 belong to the civilised right, while Delapierre is an activist and a member of the Frente de Liberaci\u00f3n Gai (Gay Liberation Front). […] Ventura, your old rival in the conquest of power within the PSUC (Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia), the EBU (European Broadcasting Union), the PCI, Red Flag and again the PSUC, that is to say, wherever we have been, the combative and brilliant old Ventura has become… sceptical… […] And Luisa is a left-wing nationalist and a feminist […]
\n\u2014And you, Schubert?
\n\u2014I hesitate between playing along with the socialists to make a run for it and being able to save for my old age, or retiring to my ideological possessions of the past and waiting for better times. \u2014And you? […]
\nFor you, they have changed the song, master<\/em>. You belong to the fugitives of Marxist knowledge, to the troop that lends language and information to international capitalism, language, information and logic of the enemy and also the satisfaction of having recovered you, master<\/em>.\u201d (El pianista<\/em>, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985, p. 65, 67-68)<\/p>\n
\nin the city of your terrors
\nin its vanquished and fugitive south
\nmediocre trails of hunger and oblivion
\nI was a shadow of a shadow on the walls
\nwhere I was shot with buffers and misgivings
\nI was born at the tail of the fled army
\nI stood in the sentry\u2019s light
\nand I borrowed air and water from you
\nin neighbourhoods you had too much of. \u201d (Praga<\/em>. Barcelona: Lumen, 1982, p. 27)<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Panorama of the Paral\u00b7lel in the 1920s. Reynals, Patrick and Arrufat come into view in black tie, top hats, etc. They are quite drunk.<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m confused
\nIn awe,
\nHorrified,
\nOvercome,
\nSplitting my sides,
\nBlown away,
\nI\u2019m just
\nIn love with
\nThis city.
\nOn the same day, in the
\nSame place,
\nI met
\nA drunk dictator
\nWho didn\u2019t dictate a thing.
\nAn Andalusian who\u2019s a
\nA mad painter
\nFrom the Empord\u00e0
\nWho, right in front of me,
\nMasturbated
\nInto an envelope
\nAnd sent
\nThe results
\nTo his father
\nSaying: I don\u2019t owe you
\nA thing.\u201d<\/p>\n