Mercè Ibarz looks back to move forward

Often, those of us who practice literary criticism rack our brains trying to find a good description of the perspective from which the authors of the works we review write. A girl in the cityIn her latest book, Mercè Ibarz (Saidí, 1954), the author herself explains: "I write from my own experience, in the first person, thanks to contemporary art and documentary." And that is precisely what she has done since then. The withdrawn land (Cuadernos Crema, 1993) until the recent essay Don't think, just look (Anagrama, 2024) passing through In the city under construction (Cream Notebooks, 2002) and Street Fever (Cuadernos Crema, 2005), renamed together as Urban Talesin the edition that Anagrama put into circulation three years ago.

A city girl It is the natural continuation of Ibarz's previous autobiographical books, where both her rural origins and her relationship with her adopted city, this Barcelona now disrupted and where enjoying a stroll—an activity the author cherishes and has cultivated so much—weigh heavily. Barcelona is a city that, little by little, she made her own and that she has decided never to leave: "And I wouldn't leave the city or its landscapes for anything in the world; however crazy it may be, I owe it everything: love, friendship, my profession, my writing."

The death of a lifelong companion

The catalyst for the writing here is the death of L, her lifelong partner. This tragic event invites the author to look back at the young woman who, at seventeen, arrived in Barcelona during the late Franco era on an Alsina Graells bus. Before that girl—whom Ibarz often refers to in the third person throughout the narrative, in a healthy exercise of detachment—lay an unknown future that would translate into a more than successful journalistic and literary career.

In her early years in Barcelona, that girl experienced freedom for the first time at the fledgling Faculty of Journalism, where she became politically active, and in various student apartments located in neighborhoods like Sant Antoni and Guinardó, while she dreamed of the city "with her eyes awake and with her eyes closed." With the thread of their relationship, built without prior models, as our guide, we accompany her on her journey of discovery and revisit her professional life in newsrooms—such as those ofToday or the Barcelona Dailywhere he traded political journalism for cultural journalism and where, at a certain point, literature took over thanks to reading Helena Valentí's translation ofThe Golden Notebook of Doris LessingUntil a studio on Rosselló Street, where he could write without distractions, nurtured his vocation.

Ibarz belongs to the generation of young people who frequented Plaça Reial, Bar Marsella, and read The ViperI like this idea that in the years of the counterculture—so male-dominated—feminism was "the counterculture of the counterculture." And I also envy the encounters she had with Anna MuriàThe writer, now living in Terrassa after a long exile, would have a whisky before lunch.

When she was young, Ibarz fell in love with London, a city that for her is an extension of Barcelona. She returned shortly after her partner's death, alone. Because to conquer death is to continue with life. A girl in the city —among her books, where she bares her soul the most—includes photographs mostly taken by the author herself during her urban wanderings and abounds in cultural references where literature, film, and music take center stage. A celebration of memories and connections, written from the conviction that culture enriches us, and is therefore doubly valuable. If you enjoy testimonial literature by Vivian GornickThis introspective exercise will not disappoint you.