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A.cigy then, the city of the novel Aloma, where there are all social classes
and where there is everything: silent streets and crowded streets, factories and
fairs, work and recreation, horse-drawn carts and shining motorcars, vegetable
plots and cinemas, the working class and the bourgeoisie, governors, citizens
and public power, the vietims of the sixth of October and the happy revellers
on the Night of Sant Joan, comfort and struggles of all kinds, luxury and class
conflicts, simple and amusing girls’ de page.
‘Acity full of tensions, where living is not easy for everyone. Nor is it for
a young git! obliged to face the fac she is a woman and is locked up, but who
knows that ‘outside there are people, flowers, girls... The city that beats with
so much life.’ And she knows that there are places to go for walks and, as in
the poem ‘Balgica’ by Josep Carner, parks with ponds that reflect the sky, long
avenues, houses with flowers and little squares with children having tea and ‘the
same gentleman as always’. A city, in short, that is human-sized. The novel
Aloma, finished in April 1936, is many things: from an initiating narrative to
an anti-matrimonial breviary; but i also forms a citizens’ map and so itis, in
away, a guide to Barcelona, Not a guide for tourists, but rather a private guide
for those of Barcelona who love an ordinary city and not a picturesque one.
‘The more or less grey city with a long history and some elements of moder-
nity more or less in place but that are gaining ground and stll co-exist with the
traditional neighbourhoods and customs. A Barcelona that is still — and will
be for a little while longer — ‘the great enchantress.
La Plaga del Diamant or the Metamorphosis
The first thing to be said about this novel is that i differs from Aloma, in
which there is a Barcelona perceived over a short period of time (fom the
spring to the autumn of 1935). In La Plaga del Diamant (1962) the timeframe
spans a much longer period and there is not one Barcelona but three: that of
the pre-war, of wartime itself and that of the post-war period. Or rather, there
is a Barcelona in successive metamorphoses, which, in turn, correspond to the
metamorphoses of the main character.
A second thing that we should take into account is that Merct Rodor-
da left for exile a few days before the fall of Barcelona in January 1939. While
her experiences of the city in the 1920s and 1930s and ducing the war are first-
hand and very precisely recorded, when she writes the novel twenty years late,
she had not experienced post-war Barcelona directly. This is important even if
the fading away of the concrete historical facts and the geographically public
spaces of the post-war period is narratively-speaking justifiable and forms part
of the symbolic weave that reveals the evolution of the main character, who is
progressively alienated by an oppressive reality.
Thirdly, one also has to pay attention to the narrative position of this
main character that ‘is recalling’, given that the novel is built from top to
bottom through alife story told through past events. Natalia narrates her past
to an indeterminate interlocutor, her own life as Colometa, from the day she
first became Colometa at the dance in La Plaga del Diamant during the local
festival, until the day she abandoned that identity forever, with the ‘ry from
hel?’ she let out in the same square many years lacer when she signs her own
story with the name ‘Colometa’ at the door of her old house. The recovery of
her identity as ‘Natlia! comes after having first been ‘Colometa’ (a name mean-
ing ‘litle dove’, given to her by Quimet, the man who would be her first
husband), later ‘the pigeon git!’ (as her friend Griselda calls her), and finally ‘the
pigeon lady’ (the name other women she meets in a park give her when she
invents the myth of the life ‘where everything was the same, but it was pretty’),
or ‘Senyora Natilia’ (as everyone ends up calling her after years of being
‘married to Antoni, her second husband). All these ate names that mark her
successive metamorphoses. Therefore, we have here a story of survival after
many losses, the loss of her identity included,
‘We have reached the point where the different constituents of reality
contained in this fiction, among them the geographical and historical frame-
work of the novel, seem to resemble one single voice, that of Natalia: they
form an integeal part of her experience and of the transformations in her life
8. Meret Rodored, The rime ofthe Does, New York, Taplinges Publishing Company, 1981. Translated
by David Rosenthal, p. 174 (and of the space in which this life takes place) which is the narrative’s objec-
tive, But they form part of it at different levels because often they acquire
meanings beyond the first person narrator's will, which, as happens in real
life, reveals more than she intends to in her discourse. The geographical or
historical references of the city are not, therefore, simple frameworks for the
structure but active underlying layers of che novel, essential and completely
life determining. Both together form part of life itself, as stated in the initial
frontispiece quotation ‘My deas, these things ate life: and so they sustain a
narrative of life.
‘One of the most relevant features in the writing of Mercé Rodoreda,
‘with reference to Natilia’s highly elaborated voice, is that the detailed precision
of che elements of realty (physical space or historical time) does not infringe
on the symbolic density ofthe discourse in any way, but gives support to it and,
to a great extent, constitutes it. So the characters in the novel are absolutely
fitted to an atmosphere, to various ways of life, to a specific and recognisable
urban geography and co a time in history framed by events that are shared by
everyone (the advent of the Republic, the war, the post-wat). These events are
perfectly identifiable and give a sociological map regarding positions towards
them. They are represented by different characters with a precision (that of
the facts and that of attitudes towards those facts) that goes tight to the details,
especially those concerning the war — the event that caused most repercussions
in Natalia’ life —, the city, and the collective life of its citizens.?
So, the changes in the city during the thrce petiods are perceived by the
reader through the eyes of the main character and her way of experiencing or
suffering the events. They can be made known in many ways, but they often
appear to be typified in mythical constructions that establish the relations
within the novel between real and symbolic order: for example, the dovecote’s
existence from its construction until its decay and the death of the last dove;
or the idea of the city transformed ‘with the blue lights’ (all the lights were
blue. It looked like the land of make-believe and it was pretty’ p. 131), which
was literally a result of the measures for civil protection against the bombs,
giving the city an unreal appearance. They are also revealed in the objectifica-
tion of the changes in the urban landscape, as, for example, the appearance of
the tramcars, which before the war passed by shining and speedy, but in the
immediate post-war ‘ran along with no windows’ and towards the end are
‘faded and old’, Or again, through a small, apparently trivial detail, but which
turns out to be important: in the post-war the colour of the teddy bear's
trousers in the oilcloth shop changes from red to blue, Throughout the novel
9. See Maria Campillo, ‘La Plaga del Diamant. Fl subsea en una nareacis de vid, Rb Marge, No. 70
(Geprember 2003), pp. 5-23,
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there are many details of this kind and ic is it not possible here, nor would it
be useful, to continue with examples, but I will try to show how the city was
transformed through one key example, which is in the idea of the square in a
novel whose title (the second tile, as its first was Colometa) is La Plaga del
Diamant. In fact, the idea ofa citizen’ life in the pre-war era isin this novel very
similar to chat in Aloma, where the geographical iconography from Tibidabo
(which is called ‘EI Tibi’ on some occasions) to Montjuic and to the sea is
repeated. In La Plaga del Diamant, however, the city is not observed from a
vertical angle but rather from one that is ‘a horizontal slice’ of a neighbour-
hood, Gracia, over a period of time of nearly thirty years. A neighbourhood
‘mostly inhabited by artisans and manual workers, who have a vigorous life of|
their own, and that is bordered to the north by Parc Giiell (Chapter Two) and to
the south by carrer de Corsega, with a central artery, carrer Gran de Gracia, with
its shops and shop windows (the shop window of the house with the oilcloths
among them), the bar called Monumental where Quimet and Colometa go on
Sundays when courting with their friends Mateu and Cintec‘to drink vermouth
and eat squid’ and which is where they celebrate their marriage too; some
squares, the nartow streets and the workshops and their own services (Quimet’s
‘carpentry workshop, the cake shop where Natilia works before getting married,
the grocer’ or colmados that have everything from pigeon seed to hydrochloric
acid; and other shops fall of ‘silent things like inkowells and blotters and post-
cards and dolls and cloching on display and aluminium pots and needlepoint
patterns)”
La Plaga del Diamant opens and closes the life of the character,
Colometa, but this is not the only square that appears here nor are we only
interested in it purely out of a sense of urban geography. The square has been
linked to the idea, since ancient times, of community life and it suggests the
notion of ‘centrality’. And therefore, one of the functions of the square in
the novel isto express the main character’ relationships with her surroundings
and with herself. So, the first chapter opens with the raffle advertised for the
festival dance in Gracia, which takes place in Plaga del Diamant.
‘When we got to the square, the musicians were already playing. The oof was covered
with coloured flowers and paper chains: chain of pape, a chain of flowers. Thee were
‘lowers with lights inside chem and the whole rof was lke an umbrella turned inside
‘out, because the ends of che chains were tied much higher up than che middle where they
all came together (...] There were asparagus plants around the bandstand to keep the
‘crowd away, and che plants were decorated with paper flowers ied together with tiny
wites. And che musicians wich this jackets off, sweating [..) And ie was hoe. Kids were
seing off firecrackers and rockets in che street. There were watermelon seeds on the
tound and near che buildings watermelon rinds and empty beer bores and they were
serting off rockets onthe rooftops roo and feom balconies. saw faces shining with sweat
and young men wiping their faces with handkerchief, The musicians were happily phay-
ing aay Everything like a decoration, And the two-step found myself dancing back
and forth and, like ie was coming from far away chough rally twas up close, I heard
his voice: Well, so she does know how to dance!’ And I smelled che strong sweat and
Faded cologne (...] And me with these eyes in fionr of me that wouldnt go away, a if
the whole world had become those eyes and there was no way co escape them. And the
night moving forvard with its charioc of stars and the festival going on and che bouquet
‘offlowers and the gil withthe bouquet of lowers, all in be, whiling around..."
This local festival dance in the open air with the happy and unworried people
suggests a merry gathering, although for the main character a personal process
begins, announced symbolically by the change in her name (‘Colometa’) and
by one of the directions taken after this change, signalled by the elastic of her
petticoat sticking into her skin like a knife. Symmetrically, the second to last
chapter of the novel (XLVI, well into the post-war period), which is about
the wedding of the daughter, Rita, produces a kind of balance between the
old life and the opening of a new life since it immediately precedes Natdlid’s
liberation. This too happens at a dance, at her daughter's wedding, where the
festival marquee in the first chapter returns but now has fresher connotations:
‘And on the walls there were garlands of asparagus plants with white paper
roses, because the real ones were out of season’. And, it does not take place in
the open air: ic isa family party in a closed establishment, not a community
festival like the first dance.
Let us go back, however, to where we were, at the end of the twenties
going into the thirties and in another square, which is the selling square. The
lexical choice (selling square instead of market square) is deliberate and signif-
icant with regards to its symbolic function and itis also an example of the rla-
tions established in the novel between the real and the symbolic orders, given
that ‘selling square’ was the term that was still common among the older people
of Gracia. The description is from the beginning of chapter XP
“The smells of meat and fish and flowers and vegetables ll mixed together, and even if
Thad’ had eyes Tl have realised Iwas geting nea the selling square. Td come out of
my street, across the carter Gran with yellow streetcars going up and down, ringing
their bells and with che drivers and conductors wearing striped uniforms with stipes
so thin that everything looked grey. The sunlight came up the Pascig de Grica and
‘wham! — berween the rows ofthe buildings it fll on che sidewalk, the people, the
stone slabs under the balconies. The street sweepers were sweeping with big brooms
‘made of heather twigs, looking as though they were thinking of someching far away
They were sweeping the gutes
made my way into che smell and the cries ofthe selling square until Iwas inthe
mid of ll that shoving — ina thick sver of women and baskets. My sells sel,
with blue halfsieeves and an apron witha bib, was dishing out pound afer pound of
mussels and cockls that she'd washed with fresh water but which sil had the smell of the sea inside their shells and it spread chrough the ai. The sweet smell of death
came from the rows of offal sellers. They made use of all the animals’ guts, selling them
spread out on cabbage leaves: kids’ fee, kids’ heads with glared eyes, hears cut i hal
‘with an empty tube in che middle logged with a bic of blood chat had gor stuck there:
1 drop of black blood, Livers soaked through with blood and wet tripe and boiled heads
hanging from hooks and all the offal sellers had white, waxy faces from spending so
much time near such tasteless food, from blowing so much into pink lungs with their
backs turned to the customers as if t were a sin. My ish seller, laughing through her
gold ceech, was weighing some fresh cod, and the light bulb hanging above her shone,
0 tiny you almost could se it fom every fish scale. The mullet, che flying fis, the
haddock, the groupets with their big heads, looking like they‘ just been painted with
their bones pressing against their backs like the thors on a big flowee — all ehe fis
came from those waves that left me empty when Isat and watched them. They came
‘outwith their sails flapping and their eyes bulging. My vegetable seller had saved some
cabbages for me — an old thin woman always dressed in black, with ewo sons who
took care of her gardens."
This evocation of the marker, filled with smells and colours, with flowers, bell-
ringing trams, crowds of women with baskets and things full of life and for
cating, also tells us of the threat of ‘the sweet smell of death’ of the stalls of the
offal sellers (whose faces were waxy, so different from ‘my fishmonger, laugh-
ing through her gold teeth’) and it incorporates different functions: it takes
place immediately before the proclamation of the Republic and represents for
the main character, a time of relative possesion in relation to her progressive
losses (her identity, her father, Quimet, Cintet, Mateu, the war, the contents
of the house, Mossén Joan's coins...). The market, like the shops, the streets
or the trams, serves to denote a time that was loaded with life in the same way
that the description of the shop-house belonging to Antoni, her second
husband, invokes a dimension of death: dank, dark, with rats, and containing
many artificial objects (che glass bell with dry flowers init, for example, or the
Japanese women’s curtain that had a ‘litle lantern painted on it’, not like
the real lanterns at che dance in the square)
Ie is not by chance that the description of the selling square precedes a
moment of pronounced importance in the life of the main character, which
coincides with the moment of the proclamation of the Republic on 14 April
1931 in Placa de Sant Jaume. Itis a fragment with a predominant elegiac func-
tion but which does incorporate other structural and temporal functions:
‘And everything went along like this, with litle headaches, sill the Republic came and.
Quirmer got all excited and went marching through the streets shouting and waving a
flag. I never could figure out where he got it from. I sill remember that cool ait, an air
that — every time I chink of ic — I've never smelled again. Never. Mixed with the
smell of new leaves and the smell of flower buds; an air that couldn last and the ait
‘hat came afterwards was never like the ar on that day —a day that made a notch in
iy life, because it was with that April and those flower-buds that my litle headaches
started turning into big headaches."
The contrast of that ‘fresh air’ loaded with novel smells and hopes with all that
came afer, on a private and public level, is shown throughout Natalia story
and the squares of life changed into squares of death. Mateu, a delicate and in
a.way angelic character, does not die at the front as Quimet or Cintet do, but
is shot... in the middle of a square’ because, according to what che main char-
acter’s patron, Senyora Enriqueta, says, ‘you can believe it. They're shooting
them all in the middle of a square.’ (Chapter XXXII) The square then, which
is the place of social and communal relationships, is a place of life (local festi-
val dances, of selling things to cat and Republican proclamations) but also a
place of death and of mutation (of losing identities and of recovering them again) and of closing the story or stages of the story: The main character closes
her ‘old life, the story of Colometa, with a ‘cry from hell’ in the last chapter,
in the middle of Plaga del Diamant, and then completely recovers her identity
as Natalia, lost or at the onset of becoming lost in that same square on the day
of the dance. Thus, she survives her personal story, inseparable from her time
in history: by using ‘the tip of the knife and with printed letters’ writes
‘Colometa... in big, deep letters’ on the door of the old house that she can no
longer enter.
El Carrer de les Camilies or the Search for a Lost Identity
In this novel published in 1966, Rodoreda keeps the same narrative form as
in her previous novel: the long monologue of a main character, Cecilia, who
tells the story of her life from childhood — at the house of some well-to-do
people who took her in because someone had left her, abandoned just after
birth, at the foot of their railings — until reaching adulthood. The motif of
the found child, with biblical resonances, has also long been used in the tradi-
tion of serial writing, And this is how the author operates: with a variety of
wresque novel and including the
‘materials, from the newspaper serial ro the
novel of intrigue, as well as a dream-like component, she reworks them into a
new creation that resembles an itinerary. Cecilia goes in search of her father,
that is, a search of her own identity, while at the same time having to survive
the world of her surroundings despite her original situation
So, a double path is created through the novel. One of these paths is
the search for her origins (the narrating character being almost unconscious of
this until the end) and the other the path is one of survival, inevitably inten-
ional. Regarding what interests us here (the image of the city), the main char-
acter’s will to survive generates a journey ‘au bout de la nuit, from the entrance
to the exis, which also traces a path through the mainly post-war urban and
social geography (the pre-war period and the war only feacure in reference to
the evolution of the main character). Itis a journey marked by descent to the
limits of marginalisation, outcast followed by a progressive ‘rise in class’ signi-
fied by the iconography of the city, which, though put across with a kind of
‘emotional unconcern’ quite different from the empathy aroused before the
war-time, is no less meaningful in what regards the recognition of personal
imaginings with that of the post-war period collective.
“Thus, the main character leaves home after experiencing childhood and
the war in the villa of the wealthy people who take her in, a childhood atmos-
phere in which there is still a life of contact and social relations with the n¢
bours (they visit one another, celebrate the Night of Sant Joan, and so on),
which she experiences while permanently affirming her ‘difference’. She is a
child without roots (she does not live in the house inherited by her parents as
‘Aloma does but in the house where she has landed out of pure chance). She
leaves while still an adolescent and ends up living in the slums; first, with a
friend from her childhood, Eusebi, who will end up in prison; then she ‘gets
comered’ with Andrés, a plasterer who dies of tuberculosis and who, Cecilia
says, ‘like everyone in those shacks except me and Eusebi, was not Catalan’
CXIID. After trying to earn her living by doing some sewing at home for depart-
‘ment stores, she is fed up with ahways feeling tired and of the old borrowed
sewing machine, which does not work properly. She goes to La Rambla to work
asa prostitute (to ‘do gentlemen’, as they say). Later she goes on to live as a kept
‘mistress with a innkeeper, Cosme (‘Eusebi and Andrés had both attracted me.
1 never felt attracted to the innkeeper. But I was hungty’ [p. 75]), and from
here, thanks to her friend Paulina, she would start her rise in society asa cou-
tesan, which represented a higher level, both socially and professionally, chan
prostitution. She starts off more modestly (maintained by Marc, a married man,
or Eladi, to whom she falls victim, submitted to all sorts of humiliations and ill
treatment), Afterwards she becomes the mistress of an older man, ‘the gentleman
of the café with the ferns, who is also married and with who she falls in love.
Esteve is her ‘angel’, a kind of protecting father figure who saves her from public
disgrace and gives her a roof of her own and protection: avila with a garden and
a serving girl. So finally, Cecilia completes the incarnation of the picaresque
character, exploiting what resources she has (in this case her beauty), passing
from dominated to dominator: entertained in luxury, with her own car and
chauffeur, she takes everything she can from her victims (money, jewellery, et.)
And, very significantly, in relation to her rise from the slums, now it is always
done by her lovers buying her a flat: not ‘half las’ as with Mare, but whole flats
(in fact, she becomes the owner of an entire block of flats because its, she says,
‘the best way of investing money’). She hides the villa that Esteve has left her
from all her patrons and keeps it as a personal refuge that becomes her ‘own
house’, her paradise decorated with the imagery of angels.
In fact, she had had this professional climb in mind since her childhood,
having the example of twin sisters, cousins of the wealthy people of the house
where she was taken in: one, Maria-Cinta, who ‘had a very rich lover and a ca,
a black one with brown upholstery, and whenever the car was parked outside,
the neighbours spied on the chauffeur as he paced to and fro waiting for her.
She always went to the Liceu opera house, Raquel’s lover had less money’ (p. 9).
Maria-Cinta is her model: she lives in the Passeig de Gracia, near the Palau
Robert (from her terrace you could see a mansion with its back garden full of
10, Meret Rodozeda, Camel Stree, Saint Pal, Minnesor, 1993, cransatad by David Rosenthal. 4. palm trees with fan-shaped leaves and big blue and white china pots, and
farther away, some more rickety palms on Avingunda Diagonal’ [p. 26-27),
and she wore a diamond cross on her chest, as it seemed that the lady compan-
ions, almost as a rule, were dressed in black, with low neck-lines and ‘wore a
litele cross or a pretty stone hanging on a short chain.’ With the war, Maria-
Cinta suffers an inevitable fall and ends up dying alone in hospital. When
Cecilia is abandoned by Esteve, her angel, and now no longer sees herself as
young, she begins the last part of her rise to economic independence so as not
to end up like Maria-Cinta. And later she manages to get another protector
who she says ‘was involved in politics and bought me an apartment’ and makes
her go chauffeur-driven to the Liceu while he is in the box with his family
(this following the long tradition of an imaginary Barcelona). But the main
character, who wanted to go to the Liceu to show off her latest present from
the politician (significantly a diamond collar, no longer a cross ‘which was a
jewel worn by girls who were a bi wayward’) and especially to ‘sce a lovely
opera about a hunchback with his dead daughter in a sack" leaves in the
middle of the performance because ‘nothing there inside was mine, while
outside there were the streets and the ait.”
‘There is a good description of the Liceu in Chapter XLVIII where
ia achieves the right of entry she has so long desired, but itis not the only
reference since the Liceu becomes a motif related to social climbing: even when
she was lite, Cecilia escapes from home, ‘goes down’ to the Liceu, and
manages to get in, but they push her out shamefully. Then when she ‘does’ La
Rambla she often passes in front without entering. Later on she goes to the exit
of the Liceu and sees Esteve, the angel-father, with his very young wife who
‘Tooked like his daughter’, something that would bring on feelings of physical
rejection for him and cause the relationship to end.
However, this social rise, of which the Liceu is the culmination, is shown.
through the different homes and through her progress on the citizen map. Her
rise starts from the slums and ends in the villa in the high part of Barcelona, In
the shack there are leaks when it rains, it is cold, and che streets are a stinking
mud bath smelling of fried food and, when itis windy, tis ‘a tin-can quarrel’
11. Chapter XLVI Ie refers ro Rigo, by Verdi in key fragment, which Cecilia had already seen
something of when she was litle, when she fst escaped from home to goto the Lice (that hunch
backed, old man among dressed up gentlemen and wearing stocking, who sang and sang without sop
ping’ IV). The passage that is being referred ro happens afer the main character has wanted to il the
Duke of Mantua using an asassin, but his daughter who loves the Duke, has allowed herself tobe killed
inhi place. When he brings the sack which he believes contains the Duke's body he heats him speak-
ing some distance away and elise he alive. And he finds that inside che sack is his daughter, the only
thing he had and whom he wanted to save fromthe Duke, and who des before him. This opera, wich
2 disguised court jester in the leading role, under «curse tac ende up coming tr, gives some ite
esting clues for reading
‘The shack had ewo solid walls; the others were made of tin sheets with old boards and.
pieces of sack sruffed in the cracks. Fusebi old me held been very sick when held eome
home from the war and that’ why it looked so run-down and held had a hard time
setting rid of the people whold been living there. The shack had no windows. The bed
‘was against one of the cin walls because that way ie was easier to fit in the table and
chairs and a chest with drawers chat were hard to open because the wood was swollen
from the damp. And the wall beside that bed, which was a cot, had some tin sheets that
didnt ic cogether so we plugged the crack with old rags (p. 43).* ‘This sunken, damp atmosphere contrasts with what her friend Paulina
experienced. Paulina was a girl who she had known as the maid of a childhood
neighbour, Senyora Rius. She was now living in Carmel, pactonised by a man
from Tarragona. Paulina explains that she had had relations with the son of her
previous employer who was imprisoned ‘not because he had done anything
bad but because he had been seen with people who were in hiding.’ Later she
explains that a man ‘half gentleman, half peasant, who only knew how to talk
about the harvests’ had set her up in the small house in Carmel, Cecilia goes
up there with Paulina:
Finally, we got on a bus. Weld walked all the way up the carrer Major [notice that i is
ro longer called Gran de Gricia) lost in conversation (...} We got off at the foot of
Mount Carmel, a the start of a winding path, Paulina’ house was halfway up the hill.
‘You went through a lite green wooden gate and the garden climbed the hill on both.
sides of some stone steps with rows of young cypresses along them [J and beyond
the cypresses, the hill was covered with purple irises (p. 67).
‘The description of the house in Carmel towards the end of Chapter XX the
end the end of Chapter suggests a simple but physically friendly place, airy,
with a garden and trees and all planted with lilies. Later on with Esteve, Cecilia
surpasses Paulina’ status and manages to get a villa with a garden in an uniden-
tified place in the high part of Barcelona, possibly Sant Gervasi, La Bonanova
or Pedralbes, but certainly not Carmel, even though Cectlia does have a house-
maid called Carmela and lilies and a lemon trce planted in the garden
Going back to the main character's path through life, we said that from
the shack Cecilia passed on to the inn and from there to the half-flat rented
in the carrer de Mallorca, which Marc, who she meets through Paulina, sets
up for her, and from here to Bladi’s bourgeois fla. This period is the most
humiliating: Cecilia is perpetually spied on and watched by a seties of sinis-
ter characters, she is uneasy and hopelessly tries to escape from the situation
going over to the Avigunda Diagonal side, to the café with the ferns, passing
through Pompeia’s church, where she sees a wedding. Itis in this small but
clogant café thar, amongst gentlemen wearing silk socks and formal discus-
sions, she falls in love with Esteve. It is a cosy café, so different from the
atmosphere of the cafés at the port, which she frequented earlier when living
in the slums and stealing blouses from a big department store (which, from
the clues, corresponds to El Siglo). This area of the Passeig de
Gracia—Diagonal is visited often in Cecilia's wandering escapades (‘I walked
up La Rambla and Passeig de Gracia’). She is affected by a constant restless-
ness in her flights: ‘I walked up La-Rambla to Plaga de Catalunya... The
thunderstorm caught up with me a little before carrer Aragé.’ This episode
te opr ath ambien el Lis ho by Pez de ares. 858
happens when she goes up to Jardinets de Gracia and ‘into a big café that
was on the comer. The counter was tall and everything in the back was shiny
glass and nickel.’ The place could correspond to La Punyalada and is where
she asks for the ham roll and the coffee with milk because ‘if I didn't eat I
would die’. She does not have money to pay and this is when she meets
Cosme, the innkeeper.
‘These escapades, like those when she is in the half-flat in carrer de
Mallorca, correspond to different forms of escape from reality, which she has
perceived since childhood to be oppressive and claustrophobic. Even when
small, when they punished her by locking her in the tower room in the villa,
Cecilia fled into the street because she was terified of dying locked up:
T thought that creak would warn them and the next thing I knew they'd grab me and
lock me in my room so I couldn't run away again and I'd die lacked up, pounding on
the door and kicking it, And once I was dead and buried, Id never beable o look For
ayy father! Later Eusebi locks the shack and hides her clothes so that she cannot go out;
the innkeeper wants to lock her in the inn; Mare has her watched in the half
flat, where she thinks she will suffocate; Eladi shuts her in and hides her suit-
case with clothes, etc.
‘She is not the only person in the story to ‘be locked up’. Busebi, who has
been to war and who ends up in prison, cells Cecilia that when he was young
‘one night he had got locked in the cemetery on purpose: later Cecilia (before
‘trying to commit suicide), locked in, drugged and raped by three men (Marc,
Eladi and the tailor), has a dream-like vision of that cemetery with the grave-
stones of the war dead, with flowers (‘tin cans of pansies’ of those revealing
colours (Yellows and purples):
usebi and [were kids everyth
yellow and purple pansies... Euebi and I climbed some black ladders on wheels and
ing was misty, there were niches half covered by cans of
shook them to make chem rll forwards it was hard because they were so heavy but 1
‘wanted co se if there were any names beginning with C on the wall with the niches.
Before leaving, we stole some lowers and chen chrew them away because they smelled
like death (..] An angel who looked lke Eusebi was watching me, and another angel
tried to give me a bouquet of stone flowers. Some flames were running around frat
cally because they couldnt find che bones they'd come out of, along, longtime ago (.~]
and we couldnt get those black ladders in the cemetery to move or read the names on
the niches and a voice that was hidden day and night kept saying ‘You have to sleep’
and the cold between my legs and the shadow fiting in one door and out the other
around the fooe ofthe bed and I slica vein on my wrist witha razor blade after making
‘This fragment, which like many others is rich in symbolic content, subscribes
to the hypothesis that El carrer de les Camélies, unlike Aloma, allows us to read
an ‘anti-ode’ of Barcelona into it. The city is perceived as a city of death as
‘opposed to the city of life, and more specifically, it could be an anti-ode to the
Barcelona landscape and the vitality of the ‘work, think, fight’ of the ode A
Barcelona by Verdaguer. Thus, when Cecilia goes to Montjuic, she does not see
a shining Barcelona but sees the shacks. In the novel, unlike what happened
in Aloma and La Placa del Diamant, he ‘good people of Barcelona who work,
love and suffer’ are not there, but there aze those people who exploit others at
all levels, who take advantage using fear and distortion (many of the charac-
ters have a physical defect, regardless of their social class, and many other
defects such as sadism). Its the Barcelona of the misery of outcast people and.
of the ostentation of the new tich, that of the politicians of the regime who
now occupy the boxes in the Liceu, that of property speculation. The
Barcelona of the riffraff avoided in the previous novels: chac of the pimps and
the madams, like Senyora Constancia; that of the prostitutes who live a poor
life and have clandestine abortions. The Barcelona of the peripheral areas and
marginal places, of Carmel and the shacks.
Ics also the Barcelona of the victors and the defeated, that of fear and
nightmare and especially the Barcelona of the dead, shown verticaly from the
cemecery of Montjuic co that of Sant Gervasi up to Tibidabo, where Cosme
takes Cecilia to a saint's day celebration, climbing on top of a tamcat. But it
isa very different celebration from the celebration in Monsjuic that takes place
in Aloma. There Aloma admires the city, “When I look down at you, seated on
‘Montjuic’ lap.’ At the celebration on this other occasion in Tibidabo (an expi-
avory temple, as everyone knows), there is no partying, no groups of people
having fun, no fireworks, nor anyone apparently, as if the characters were alone.
Even there, as in the whole novel, che city always scems co be deserted: no
shouting shopkeepers, no women with baskets, no boisterous crowds, happy
or furious: only, from time to time, indeterminate, anonymous and silent
‘people’, ‘people {that} hurried by’.
The narrator even affirms that she had not seen anything, she does not
seem to have looked at the city on the day that Eladi takes her ‘to the foot of
the funicular railway to have a drink overlooking Barcelona, as if Barcelona was
not there. But she does describe an excursion by car with Marc, from Paulina’s
hhouse in Carmel, entering and coming out of the city three or four times
through different places ‘after having run and run down streets full of dust Ie
is a more or less indeterminate space, like many in the novel, which reveals a
particularly untidy urban structure with a mixture of industry and detached
hhouses, here and there: another city ‘now stretched out from river to river’
‘We go in his cat, which vasa black conversble witha white hood, and jus 8 we were
siting down be eumed to me and said, I dant know ie was serious or joe, that some
realy weed things happened in Barcelona [The bridges crossed rivers of sand cut
by ticles of water, with shacks right down to the sand, gltering in che sunlight, You
could see houses by themselves with gardens and fat roof, pine groves on both sides
ofthe road and an occasional pres or nling around a baleony with pots of grani-
tums. We turned down setch of dirt oad that was so bad the car bounce from hole
to hoe ikea grasshopper. And smoke poured out ofthe chimneys."
Cecilia, a girl born ‘around the month of April’ (and here I am only suggest-
ing a reading, but one which is also possible), would never find her father, nor
find out if she was the illegitimate daughter of a marquise, ofa chorister, or of
a student with no resources and a girl put into service (all the motifs of serial
ature, but here puc toa very different use); or whether she was abandoned
by an anarchist father ‘one of those men who throw bombs and want co burn everything, like the neighbours used to say when she was litte. Nor would she
know if she was the loved daughter of a very poor musician (and that is why
she is called Cecilia and has pianist’s hands), a musician who had not been
able to keep her (a theory that is proposed by the man who turns out to be
called Jaume and who acts as her veritable father). In the end, Cecilia can only
‘know thar she was the girl ‘with the face of a nymph and of a saine (as the lady
dressed in purple says), but ‘with a criminal’ ears, that ‘good girl who did
strange things’ (as Senyora Magdalena, who is like a mother to her, says) who
‘was not baptised with the name Cecilia by any father.
In fact, the origin ofthat ltd giel found ‘around the monch of April’ and
‘who played with fire when she was little, and set fire to the piles of newspapers,
and who was punished with a red dress that she didn like (and they called her
“the flame’ when they put it on het) would never be known; nor whether she
was abandoned by an anarchist or by an artist (whether in the name of poli-
tics or in che name of art). And this is because, in reality, her father did not
conceived her, wether a politician or an artist, not even the man who gave her
her name and acted as her father, Jaume, but the night watchman who called
her Cecilia, precisely because it was a name borrowed from a gil, he says, ‘who
swas always ill and who died.’
To end, I would like to make a brief reference to Mirall rencat (1974)
so as to close the circle that began with Aloma (1938), with a novel about a
‘character that continues as a family saga spanning three generations. This is
because Minall rrencat, among many other things, also tells the story of the
‘evolution of a modern city, with clear similarities to other European cities,
such as Paris or Vienna (in this last case, one needs only to see the symmetry
established berween the Opera of Vienna and that of the Liceu of Barcelona,
or the cake shop of Dehmel and Can Culleretes, regarding the love stories of
Salvador Valldaura, for example).
Bue the specific connection I would like to point to between this novel
and El earrer de les Camilies isthe vision of the post-war period and how the
Valldaura’s magnificent villa ends up in the hands of the heiress, Sofia. She
pulls ic down to build a block of flats. In this way, a circle of the city’ history
ends as do some of its ways of life, never to return, for many reasons: histori-
cal and also economic ones, call them urban speculation, demographic trans-
formation or mass tourism. When Sofia pulls down the villa, the hopes
suggested long ago in the elegy in La Placa del Diamant have been definitively
abolished; those hopes that April 1931, smelling of flower buds, was supposed
to bring but which now would never come into being. That fresh air, flower-
ing on one day, became very scarce later. An air that, as the main character
says, can ‘never be smelt again. Ever.
Quotations
‘ela na hors bon de rept. En un jad prope ee fo. s ena espe des branquilos el
Crus dees branes verdes Dae dana pte vela ois moles fen un ptt sot sigusl mg de
Gare ella da Vatuarse | apa profandanent ot penctart de rola cea Oia
clo Bren un deal ck banca us ebro de eda ie pimaves amb alee
plone dedbojamene. 1)
4 Qube oe, de ni ica Vex noha wg més, en mor lpr, vende ogra
pis pica qualaevol bands Segur que cara ce sbraien dines, metre que aa nord sha ces.
fe dep an Can ng Selo cen ens me ev cane
inde dear segment epost ca caps lc gl she tam al nr
tpamdsaqulba nce el nn. Tov din aquena co, 0530 oe
“edi lca an ser, an de os ples Lacs quel pte va aq amb cans dese
Cis Pan sgn pes enen an soa: npr digest en un poco pera
porters mal lege: Sent a ga de dion mir ele teenie
ieun carer eet del anon ob aol apes, blons whi hau sn lagu que
iG cans ven fn anus Fomine Es prop dma ices tine gue tone at open
soln de plan
‘EL tq ser tea Alb omé lb ale es plants men ls balons, ue
“etl ene fa
wt Lacambra no ca tor Se sent arts cots per damunt dpi, dar aus, Remo de
pine Unc erie pnp pc Un ep dab ome dng
Rit ac Sos aman dun ly len dee gu ede cel
pate as pcs de borg sn pens de ane Labia. andes sees fan un
Eno rd qu quan prs rep a ee sot ean Gent 27)
wi Bev bata pel carer de Mactan Que dient quest dees hos qf cum de ere
il Ag ld are no gue pn nb np ren oo
luo
Si pect de pie una exons ns ai, pas el bana de Sat Gea ns 2 Gala Aa plas
{enbantasda baron mn cvs dora nena ors owl nase
‘en gave embadali Hl his an dane unt mia pt amb ua bel orp, una bare,
Un cal ave pruna bara de lau era qal pujavabaikar icamen mente a asia Ba
mmo U7)
i: Alfons, Bron bella un halo rgen inceniaa el cli ia una campana magia de oe A
Fagus lume del Pac pampalagcven pnd sme Se nes moods a anata
tenes ees ancade S/lwen patra un un, nome equal ell a per com
rye
= Vabatareccae, va pende el ide, Les clarnes de Fanaa, tan staal i fn bona
Iopreni (.) Un men proscent de Sbudl pas com un lamp. Cala pene —~Maage tab
fo quan ca adona que Shai uv de bands, Ea ops de Bcona Pues das 3
Plans 7)
13 Cac? Quis? Que dle. Xoclaa Lanne dua vemut lamp Hl nacre pra gu
Tila ell dele corrtsala pla, Cap persona interessant en ot l vag El cen que arene. fesqacna
‘enc alcen uma vemai det cn ane snl anus fle ks pre del ne
crs)
‘iL Rambles aval quin sommes parade eto sobre. A cap ali pe del ms no deen
hin de tan gemmades Quin pos de cel vere in una gla Ios esas dares
ole. Ginera ans bangs sacs Ron es ron Sato tocar Quant Nos Rc
BE Deo peder ne compar 08.1)
ll fn boob gran eldares cl bax. Carepa de temps de priv En
Hk clearer de ela pea vorr rit empuna ron gue do Pup de Unvete Gian
Visine + Minene’—Amun pepe eps
~apialinmen ple dol de oa mens pos sey. Tiles Ls munanyes as
