Colm Tóibín’s love letter to Barcelona and Catalan culture.

The Irish author first published Homage to Barcelona in 1990 and the Catalan version was out of print for two decades. Now we recover this unique testimony in an illustrated edition and a new foreword by the author, who looks at the city with the perspective of more than three decades in which he has remained closely linked to Barcelona.

“The city has changed; the city is still the same.” That's how Colm Tóibín begins the exclusive foreword to this special edition of his beautiful tribute to Barcelona, a personal portrait he wrote in the early 1990s and which continues to be a literary work of reference on our history, culture and customs, explained to the whole world by one of the best writers of contemporary literature. Reading it again with today’s eyes takes us on a fantastic nostalgia trip around pre-Olympic Barcelona and some of the key moments and landmarks in our country’s history.

In the Barcelona Colm Tóibín pays homage to, tourists would gather on the Rambla, in the Barri Gòtic (old town) and Barceloneta – and scarcely anywhere else. Carrer Ample was packed with music shops, the locals bought their fish at the Boqueria market, and we still called El Raval the Barri Xino (Chinatown). In these pages you’ll find the city full of life that the famous Irish author has inhabited during long stays, and which he combines with visits to illustrious places such as Cadaqués and Dalí's Portlligat, Miró's Mont-roig, Berga in the middle of Patum, the Cau Ferrat in Sitges or Montserrat, among others.