• Literature: Juan Marsé dies
  • Juan Marsé and the cinema. Reality, but well
  • Profile: sociology, communist militancy and other class confusions
  • Farewell: Juan Marsé's intimate portrait among photos of poets
  • 'Journey to the South'. Advancement of his unpublished book

In a Barcelona where the official account written by his opportunist bourgeoisie has always despised the daily prose of the street, so far from his provincial delusions of greatness, Juan Marsé portrayed sentence by sentence, novel by novel, punch by punch the sentimental universe of a mestizo city, for port and Mediterranean, that so many have tried to subdue and always failed. That restless city that stirred in neighborhoods such as El Carmelo, Horta, El Guinardó, Poble Sec ... Eternal confluences of accents and biographies that during the sad post-war period, the long-forgotten Transition and the Olympic orgy, but also in the recent years of the locoid independence processThey have always played the role of observers of the festivals celebrated in pergolas and gardens where the infinite Teresas dance.

With the speed and strength of the chroniclers far from any academy, Marsé wrote the great (great) novel of the Charnega and losing Barcelona , a mythological horizon in which many perished when trying to achieve it, and with which he seduced thousands of readers that, with the passage of time and the establishment of Pujolato , they discovered the subversive value of the written word.

Without wanting to but without avoiding the confrontation, with the arrogance of a neighborhood boy against any authority, Marsé was pointed out by Catalan nationalism as an obstacle in the process of building the ideal Catalonia - a party, a language, a religion -, where his Castilian son of bilingualism and rich in metaphors, and that string of frontier characters with whom he filled the imaginary of Barcelona, ​​were considered little less than satanic verses.

Such lack of institutional recognition, with hardly any space on TV3 and other platforms endowed with public money, while bordered by the curricula with which the Generalitat has been molding its youth, in the end it gave Marsé the wonderful attraction of cursed writer. I remember at the end of the 90s, in the schools in the upper area of ​​the Catalan capital, where the eternal Teresas still study today and where from time to time ambushes wander around, to which their hearts will break with a cold telephone message, the Marsé's works, such as those of Celine, Kerouac, Salinger, Gide or Sagarra , passed from hand to hand. Reading material for every adolescent thirsty for literature, street and dandyism.

In this way, with old editions of If they tell you that I fell , One day I will return and The Shanghai Spell tucked into the pockets of blazers made in Groc, stolen from our parents' wardrobes, we did not launch ourselves into the Barcelona of Juan Marsé . As real and fictional as dreams and nightmares.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • literature
  • Barcelona

Literature Juan Marsé: sociology, communist militancy and other class confusions

LiteratureThe Barcelona of the Dragon by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Literature The phenomenon of The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón: the worldwide success of Spanish literature

See links of interest

  • Last News
  • English translator
  • TV programming
  • Quixote
  • Work calendar
  • Daily horoscope
  • Santander League Ranking
  • League calendar
  • TV Movies
  • Themes
  • MotoGP Spanish Grand Prix, live
  • Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, live
  • Alavés - Barcelona, ​​live