Barcelona City Council and Factoría Cultural Martínez have published The Barcelonian, a title that narrates the city of Barcelona through the covers for an imaginary magazine designed by different illustrators, paying homage to the cover page of ‘The New Yorker’.
The first volume of The Barcelonian, a title co-published by Barcelona City Council and Factoría Cultural Martínez, is now available in bookshops. This is an artistic project launched by Luisa Vera (Alicante, 1962), who had a vision of something that could be the front page of The New Yorker, but in the context of the city of Barcelona, and invited other artists from the city to participate in the project by imagining different covers depicting the city.
It was in June 2020 that the cover of this fictitious magazine began to appear weekly on social media. The aim of The Barcelonian is to explain the city through the eyes of different artists who live in Barcelona and see the city, positioned as one of the great international capitals of art and design.
The book is a reflection from the artistic community that invites you to read its images as if they were a diary of the city.
The website arrived in 2021, with a display of creative talent that showcases Barcelona’s artistic community. The project is still growing and taking shape; in May 2022 the first exhibition was held at the L’Illa Diagonal shopping centre, and in September 2022 the first 102 covers were exhibited at the Urgell Civic Centre, where a tour of the images invites you to stroll through the streets of Barcelona in a different and unusual way.
These 102 illustrations that represent the first covers are the ones that shape the book, which is also a tribute to the much-missed Miguel Gallardo, whose illustration has been chosen as the image for the cover.
Launch in the Teresa Pàmies Auditorium at the Urgell Civic Centre
The book launch will take place on Tuesday 22 November at 7 pm in the Teresa Pàmies Auditorium at the Urgell Civic Centre (C. Comte d’Urgell, 145). Participants will include Águeda Bañón, director of communications at Barcelona City Council; artist Perico Pastor, one of the illustrators of the book, Luisa Vera, founder of The Barcelonian, and Inés García-Albi, manager of Factoría Cultural Martínez and co-editor of The Barcelonian.