A city that was built by shooting

Like the bubbles in a bottle of cava, so sparkle the reasons for celebration on Tuesday at 144 Carrer Pau Claris, with Èric del Arco and Josep Cots, the bookseller with the bow tie: Documenta is celebrating 50 years of existence—it opened on January 9, 1975 in Ciutat Vella—the same age as The Truth About the Savolta Case, published on April 23, 1975, the last day of the Francoist Book Fair. Likewise, Eduardo Mendoza and Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, the stars of the evening, come with a bag full of awards: the Princess of Asturias Award for the former, and the Fernando Lara Award for the latter, for the novel Mystery in the Gothic Quarter, soon to be published. In short, the bookstore is packed with enthusiastic Mendoza readers and the Planeta Group bosses: Jesús Badenes, Marc Rocamora, Albert Andreu, and Elena Ramírez, editorial director of Seix Barral. It's shocking to realize that almost everything has been around for half a century, how incredible.

Mendoza often resorts to sarcasm. His humor is sometimes silly, and at other times, a Cervantine-style humor that thrives on perplexity "in the face of the ever-changing spectacle of life," writes Vila-Sanjuán in the prologue to the commemorative edition of La verdad…

The very Barcelona novel 'The Truth About the Savolta Case' celebrates its 50th anniversary.

The Cervantes Prize winner sparked laughter among the audience when he recalled that in 1975, the year he debuted as a novelist, there were several high-profile film releases competing on the billboard—titles like Adultery Spanish Style, By Profession: Polygamist , and Three Swedes for Three Rodriguez— so the country “was already very prepared to receive masterpieces.”

More laughter when the editor of the supplement Cultura/s recalls the censorship report that authorized the publication: "A stupid and confusing novel, written without rhyme or reason." Okay, fine.

The plot of the novel, already in its fifties, takes place between 1917 and 1919, when the violence of workers' organizations and hired assassins grew more radical. The years of the Red and White gunfight, which share little with the warmth of Rusiñol's paintings: the Barcelona and Catalonia we know were achieved "with gunfire," Mendoza emphasizes.

Mauser gunfire also greeted George Orwell upon his arrival in the city in December 1936, eventually enlisting in the International Brigades. Every June, the CCCB organizes literary routes through the Gothic alleyways in memory of the British writer and his memoir , Homage to Catalonia (1938). Thursday's walk, in English, was led by specialist Nick Lloyd, a delight were it not for the fact that the roadworks, alas, have turned La Rambla into an impassable American runway: the Caterpillar machines are left to survive on tourist mojitos. The route ended at the Café Moka, one of the settings for the fets de maig of 1937; you know, a civil war within the Civil War. Anarchists versus Stalinists, in a clumsy summary.

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Although he remained in the background for decades, Orwell, author of the dystopian 1984, re-emerges today as a clear-sighted thinker for his defense of freedom of expression and his denunciation of dogmas and totalitarianism. In times of tribulation like these, it's best to move to shadowy places, filled with small and beautiful things, like poetry. More verses, less like it ! Thus, Carlos Zanón, after ruining our Saturday siesta, more than made it up to those who came to hear him at the Nollegiu bookstore in Poblenou, along with his factotum, Xavier Vidal. At the presentation of his new anthology, Trizas (Espasa), Zanón read poems and recounted his early days in his vocation, at age 22; if he ever wins the Planeta Prize, he said, it will be "to recoup the money I spent back then on photocopies."

Also noteworthy during this busy week was the party in Ona on Tuesday, celebrating the 35th anniversary of Cafè Central and the continued existence of a publishing house built by Antoni Clapés and Víctor Sunyol. Vidal, the Nollegiu brothers' brilliant bookseller, is now joining the project.