"Mercè Rodoreda made 'Downton Abbey' long before the series existed."

BarcelonaWhat is the origin of the perennial success of Mercè RodoredaWith this difficult question to answer, the coordinator of ARA Leemos, Jordi Nopca, opened the debate held this Tuesday at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC) and which included the participation of essayist Montserrat Bacardí and writer and journalist Xavier Bosch. "There is no magic formula that answers this question," Bacardí stated at the event organized by the ARA and the IEC. The essayist suggested some possibilities: "She poses essential human conflicts based on small plots; she is not a realist writer, but the works take place in a specific space and time, and the more deeply rooted they are, the more they can be extrapolated; she has a narrative and stylistic complexity that is not noticeable; and there is always an underlying spirit of revolt."

Rodoreda has achieved many milestones. As Nopca pointed out, she has managed to connect with many generations and is the Catalan literary author with the most translations and translated into the most languages. "She is a writer with half a dozen works of the highest quality and with a masterpiece, Diamond Square, that has managed to become part of the collective imagination," says Bacardí.

"Rodoreda broke the mirror"

Bosch emphasizes the fact that the versatile writer, who published novels, children's literature, poetry, short stories and articles, broke all the rules: "She was a Catalan woman who had lost the Civil War and went into exile. She doesn't write as people wrote before her and wants to transcend by writing in Catalan. There is a will for personal and cultural resistance." The journalist and writer recovered the censor's report that he had to read. Diamond SquareAmong many other things, the censor said it was an unclassifiable work due to its form and content. "He couldn't label it, he couldn't put it in a drawer, and that disoriented him," explains Bosch.

"Its modernity also lies in the fact that it doesn't aim to reflect reality, but rather interprets life through the subjective perspectives of its characters. Rodoreda breaks the mirror," asserts the writer and journalist, who maintains that today Diamond Square would be canceled because of everything Quimet says in the first three chapters. "Controlling, manipulative, psychologically and physically abusive. Is there anything more current? And she wrote it 65 years ago." In Rodoreda's novels, Bosch emphasizes, women are protagonists with a novelty. "She writes from their point of view and highlights the patriarchy."

The author ofAloma He did not underestimate the fact that he had to reach the maximum number of readers if he wanted the Catalan language to survive. "Long before the series existed Downton Abbey, Rodoreda wrote Broken mirror with the Valldauras and everything happens there," Bosch emphasizes.

Nopca has proposed a game to Bacardí and Bosch: to tell about her initiation moment with Rodoreda. Bacardí has made "a confession." She was a very bad student and when she failed too many subjects her parents locked her in the attic and in her garret Diamond Square. Bosch returned to Diamond Square looking for authors to "suck up on" while trying to have his own voice as a writer. Nopca was made to read a fragment of Broken mirror in high school and perceived her as "an impossible author." She reconciled there a few years later, at university, with My Cristina and other stories"I discovered a universe of my own, full of hidden references, that escaped the image I had," Nopca told the eighty people who followed the debate.