Having two Nobel Prize winners for Literature living corner to corner is not something that any city can boast of. Barcelona had that privilege at the beginning of the 70s. Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez established his residence at number 6 Caponata street and, just a few meters away, at 50 Osi street, Mario Vargas Llosa moved in, both under the auspices from his literary agent Carmen Balcells, whom they would soon call Big Mama.
This singularity is unknown to the majority of Barcelonans, including those from the Sarrià neighbourhood, as there is no plaque on any of the buildings indicating that these two personalities lived there, as is the case with other relevant writers or personalities who have left their mark on the Catalan capital and which, in addition to appearing on the city’s literary map, updated annually by the City Council, has its hallmark.
For years the idea has been flying over among some neighbors to install an insignia in the block where the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude resided, as Dolors, one of the most veteran tenants of the block, assured. “In the 80s I let it fall that it would be interesting to identify his passage here, but people were not up for the job. In the 90s I repeated it again, and seeing that there was still no predisposition, I let it be. He was a discreet, pleasant man who you could hear typing if you looked out on the balcony, since he almost always wrote by the windowâ€.
A sound that he heard repeatedly between 1969 and 1975, the year in which the writer went on vacation to Mexico and did not return, despite having bought a return ticket from Bogotá to Barcelona. The family feared that the situation would become tense after Franco’s death and the publication of El otoño del patriarca, written during his Barcelona years and featuring a dictator.
After years of oblivion, and this time at the request of the City Council, in 2021 the long-awaited neighborhood consultation took place. Five votes in favor, three against and the rest blank. The proposal, as stated in the minutes, collected by Mullerat Gestions, was approved by a majority. However, a series of misunderstandings led to the matter being left in limbo. The neighbors waited patiently for a plaque that did not arrive and whose delay they attributed “to the pandemic and administrative issues,” according to what La Vanguardia, the current president of the ladder, told.
What no one told them is that everyone’s approval was necessary in order to move forward. “To place a plaque it is necessary to have the consent of the community. Only if one person disagrees, the installation is no longer possibleâ€, points out Guillem Talens from the Barcelona Institute of Culture (ICUB).
That same reason is why Osi street does not have a sign either, although in this case, the majority of the stairs prefer it to be so. “It would have an important political connotation that other writers do not have,” says Javier Canals, owner of the apartment where Vargas Llosa lived. An opinion “shared by a large part of the neighbors,” he says.
In Caponata, on the other hand, it is attributed more to a theme of “discretion and security. I don’t think anyone is really against it, but there is always the fear that the house will become a symbol and that some curious person will enter. Although in reality it is already a place of pilgrimage for its readers, because this information is public and is on Google. Anyway, it is a cultural tourism that does not bother and that takes a couple of pictures and leavesâ€, says Colin McElwee. This neighbor settled in the building in 1999 and it was not until the day after GarcÃa Márquez’s death, in April 2014, that he found out that the Colombian writer had lived on the ground floor.
“Journalists began to arrive. I went down to see what was happening and they told me the story. Like me, other neighbors were surprised. How could it be that we didn’t know anything? I think it is acceptable to return what he did for the city with this tribute â€.
Little by little, Barcelona recovers the memory of Latin American authors with plaques such as those of Rómulo Gallegos or Rubén DarÃo. But, despite recent distinctions such as that of Roberto Bolaño, tributes to the next generation are missed. For the author of the Boom, the efforts are stopped, just like the Gabo Festival, a project that was affected by the pandemic. “It is pending updating to gauge whether the complicity is maintained and determine its concretion,” says the ICUB. For his part, McElwee points out that “it would be nice if both projects – the festival and the plaque – became a reality in 2024, since it will be ten years since his death.” Time will tell.
