Maria Buhigas recommends a book that has helped her understand the contemporary world
The chief architect of Barcelona found in the novel 'Solito' a literary explanation for the social phenomenon of migrations
BarcelonaMaria Buhigas, head architect of Barcelona City Council, talks about her reading with contagious enthusiasm. She assures that she can have up to twenty books on her nightstand, from comics to essays. One after another, she reads them all. The last one she finished is an essay in English that she bought almost ten years ago, Ninety percent of everything [The 90% of everything], by Rose George. "I alternate books that are a bit more freaky with novels and other more frivolous readings to pass the time," says Buhigas. "When I was young, I read many classics – she adds – and now I am very interested in contemporary novels and essays." The book that Buhigas recommends, Solito, by Javier Zamora, published in Catalan by Edicions del Periscopi; it is one of the books that allows her to discover other realities.
In Solito, Zamora recounts his own journey when he was nine years old from his native town in El Salvador to the United States to reunite with his parents. His grandfather accompanied him to Guatemala, but Zamora had to continue alone, crossing Mexico and the Sonoran Desert with other migrants, some of whom died and others were arrested or disappeared. "Before working as head architect, I was a consultant for the UN-Habitat Agency on projects in countries such as Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Cuba, and I am very interested in first-person accounts from the countries where I have worked. Whenever I went to a country to work, I looked for books there, not necessarily historical ones: in contemporary novels, you also find descriptions of the reality of a place," says Buhigas.
From novels like Solito, Buhigas likes the author's ability to "create characters" and represent the context. All of this allows her to understand "from empathy" the realities of people who leave their places of origin to find a better life in Barcelona. Barcelona has a population from 180 different origins, and many communities have "very different life backpacks." "Reading about these origins, or these life experiences, also gives you a little more knowledge of what the lives of these people might be like," says Buhigas.
