Writers and Barcelona
Barcelona has been and keeps being a perfect scene for literary works, a source of inspiration for writers who were born here and a welcoming place for writers from around the world who have described it in their books.
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Jordi GALCERAN
(Barcelona, 1964)
A playwright, translator, and theatre adaptor, he is the author of works such as Words in Chains (1996), Dakota (1996), Carnival (2006) and El crèdit (2014). His work The Grönholm Method (2003), created a huge international impact and ended up a sellout. The work, which has been showing in Barcelona for three seasons, is represented in some sixty countries and a total of over two million spectators.
Rómulo GALLEGOS
(Caracas, 1884 - 1969)
Writer and politician. Considered one of the most renowned Venezuelan writers and intellectuals of the twentieth century, he was also President of the Republic in 1948. He published his first work El último solar at the age of 36, and was awarded a National Prize for Literature. Before the civil war, from 1931 to 1932, he lived in Barcelona on Carrer Muntaner in the Sant Gervasi neighbourhood, where a plaque with the words “Here I lived and wrote” can be found. During his time in Barcelona he wrote Cantaclaro and Canaima. He was one of the figures of the boom of Latin American literature and held in high esteem by writers such as Roberto Bolaño.
Carlos GÁMEZ
(Barcelona, 1969)
Physics teacher and writer. Master in Creación Literaria of the Universidad Pompeu Fabra. In 2002 he publishes his first book, Managua seis: diario de un recluso. With the collection of stories Artefactos (2012), he won the IX Premio Cafè Món de Narrativa.
Tomàs GARCÉS
(Barcelona, 1901 – 1993)
A poet and lawyer, he is also a literary critic focused on prose, translation, and journalism. His first poetry book, Vint cançons (1922), is inspired in Barceloneta, the neighbourhood where he grew up. A friend of Joan Salvat-Papasseit, he is one of his main critics and biographers, as is evident in work such as Sobre Salvat-Papasseit i altres escrits (1972). In 1993, he received the Catalan Literature Award of Honour.
Gabriel GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
(Arataca, 1928 – Mexico City, 2014)
Author of emblematic and renowned novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), he was a pioneer in magical realism and one of the most prominent figures of literature worldwide. In 1967, his agent Carmen Balcells helped him settle in Barcelona, where he became an icon of the boom of Latin American literature of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1982, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Sebastià GASCH
(Barcelona, 1897 – 1980)
A writer and journalist, he is an art and entertainment critic. A follower and promoter of vanguardism and new trends, in 1928, he signed the Manifest Groc together with Salvador Dalí and Lluís Montanyà. A prolific and multifaceted writer, he is the author of books such as La pintura catalana contemporània (1937), De la danza 1946), El circo y sus figuras (1947), París, 1940 (1956), Barcelona de nit (1957), Les nits de Barcelona (1969), El Molino (1972) and Etapes d'una nova vida (2002).
Jean GENET
(Paris, 1910 – 1986)
Novelist, poet, and playwright, he lived through and portrayed some of the harshest environments of the society of his time, such as the life of crooks or prostitution. In 1949, he published the work Journal du voleur in which he describes his time in Barcelona.
Jaime GIL DE BIEDMA
(Barcelona, 1929 – 1990)
Linked to the Barcelona poetry generation of the fifties (featuring the likes of Goytisolo and Gabriel Ferrater), he is author of an important and influential work of poetry that repeatedly refers to Barcelona and which is included in the volume Las personas del verbo (1975).
Alicia GIMÉNEZ BARTLETT
(Almansa, 1951)
A crime novelist, she is author of the famous saga of the Inspector Petra Delicado. In addition to numerous international awards, in 2010, she won the Nadal award for Donde nadie te encuentre (2011), and in 2015, the Pepe Carvalho award for crime novels, and the Planeta prize for her work Hombres desnudos (2015). Much of her work is set in Barcelona, where she has been living since 1975.
José Luis GIMÉNEZ-FRONTIN
(Barcelona, 1943 - 2008)
A poet, translator, and literary critic, José Luis Giménez-Frontin won the City of Barcelona Award for Literature in the years1981, (for his poetry book Las voces de Laye), and 1991 (for his novel Señorear la tierra). His complete work of poems is published in La ruta de Occitania. Poesía reunida1972–2006 (2006). He is one of the founders of the Catalan Language Writers’ Association (AELC)