This was possibly the last interview conducted with novelist and political commentator Manuel Vázquez Montalbán before he died of a heart attack in Bangkok att he age of 64. He had been on a book tour of Australia and had spoken to Australian crime fiction magazine, Crime Factory.
Here’s was what he had to say about Barcelona:
What does Barcelona mean for you?
Barcelona is at the same time both the territory where my memory is formed and the place with which I have a relationship of knowledge like that of a dog when he urinates in the four corners. He’s marked his territory. Given that it’s a city with many layers, it could be said that it is a various city in one, as I tried to show in my book Barcelonas, a book which has been translated into English. In books like The Pianist which are not part of the Carvalho series, Barcelona is primarily the city of the hidden memory, thanks to the Civil War, while in the Carvalho cycle of books, it is the setting in which is created the conflict with crime, and sometimes, between politics and crime.
- Manuel Vázquez Montalbán – Wikipedia
- Obituary The Guardian “A novelist, poet, essayist, political commentator, playwright and humorist, Vázquez was born in Barcelona’s seedy Barrio Chino neighbourhood just after the Spanish civil war. His father, a communist labourer, was imprisoned for five years after the war, and his anarcho-syndicalist mother was a seamstress. The author was passionate about Barcelona, especially its football club.”