A journey to the hidden side of Barcelona

Beneath the institutional banners that proclaim how beautiful Barcelona is—or was—another city breathes… with difficulty. Behind the shop windows of the luxury boutiques on Passeig de Gràcia, many other establishments, without queues of customers or security guards at their doors, struggle to survive. Beyond the Michelin-starred restaurants, frequented by Mobile World Congress professionals and tourists who can afford it, it's also possible to eat decently in pizzerias like Frankie Gallo Cha Cha in the Raval neighborhood.

Carlos Zanón (Barcelona, ​​​​1966) explores, in his most recent novel, Lost and Found (Salamandra), settings that are dear to him: those of the other side of the moon of a Barcelona that is often unseen—or unwilling to be seen—but which shines just as brightly, if not brighter, than the other: humanity and misery intertwine. A hidden face made up of barbershops where a haircut costs ten euros, and a fake passport, what could possibly cost, 4,500?; of nightclubs filled with cake, smoke, and a seedy side, like Donna Summer; of hotels with a few stars, but a slightly melancholic feel, like the Excalibur, where guests seem like ghosts of themselves as they lick the wounds of past lives.

Whether these last two names are real or not, surely very similar dens exist beneath the skin of the official, artificial city. And what can we say about the lost characters who swarm about? In a big city, who hasn't felt lost, at some point, or perhaps always, even without realizing it?

Álex, Inés, and Lola K. are, in that order, the lost protagonist and two of the equally lost supporting stars whom Zanón follows around Barcelona, ​​in a story with a melody of existential wheel. A story illuminated by the lighting of a Jules Dassin film and with pages that deserve Jackie Gleason's music: an impossible but exhilarating combination.

Pact with Conscience

Alex is a lawyer going through a deep personal crisis and living in a hotel. no man's land Par excellence, while deciding—or not—what to do with his life, and while making a pact with his conscience for each of his actions (Zanón calls the Jiminy Cricket that accompanies him 24 hours a day "Fat Kid" in one of the text's many successes). Inés, one of the many women who have arrived in Catalonia from Latin America in recent years, works at the Donna Summer bar serving drinks, scaring womanizers, taking care of a daughter, fleeing a violent husband, and paying off an impossible debt to the old owner, a certain Señor Paco, who has no more vices to accumulate. And Lola K, who is the pole of attraction, downfall, and redemption for Álex. The woman is a successful painter and the failed wife of an even more failed representative of the Catalan bourgeoisie who has lost all his money, his dignity, and much more that he will lose.

In one noir which it neither is, nor wants to be; what matters least is the corpse that, to put it simply, sets the action in motion, which has also been lost. A supposed corpse that is taken from the case about the disappearance of an English rugby player in Barcelona, ​​in November 2022, a few days after another rugby player, in this case Australian, He was killed in an accident at the Apollo Theater.Mr. Paco sees an opportunity to make more money when the Englishman's family sends a detective to Barcelona to find clues about what happened to the boy. Alex gets involved because the old guy from Donna Summer asks him to traffic drugs and offers him information and a passport. But, in short, the rugby players are just a couple of MacGuffins. Hitchcockians to which no attention needs to be paid.

The novel is also related stylistically to Taxi, with Love songIt also contains nods to Juliette Binoche (Zanón's muse?), as it already did in his Carvalho.In other words, the regular reader of his work will recognize it. But the most attentive reader will appreciate the great paradox it raises Lost and Found What it is: a literary sleight of hand in which the disappearance of everything lost by its lost characters—ultimately, their identity—serves to reveal the reality of a city in which they are irrevocably lost, and which also loses us, perhaps like any great metropolis of the 21st century. In Carlos Zanón's Barcelona, ​​survival is harder and more dramatic than crime; living is a daily trial by fire. And chapter 31 of the novel is a small gem that, unfortunately, only postpones the tragedy: because love or desire are little more than deceptions that allow us to survive a little longer.