After 414 days of siege, Barcelona was a city of misery and hunger. There were neither goods to sell nor raw materials to work with. Instead, there was plenty of work to do burying the dead, caring for the wounded, and surviving in half-ruined houses. Albert Garcia Espuche not only explains this but also provides very precise data on this poverty. He does so through notarial and cadastral documents. In 1717, many men signed petitions to avoid paying the land tax and declared themselves indigent. Specifically, 305. Another 28 joined the navy, a way to escape poverty. In that Barcelona after September 11th, there was also much distrust because there were spies, informants, and informers, and the rebels who returned to the defeated city. However, there were always attempts at resistance, residents who risked hanging posters at night, and others who tried to organize a rebellion, until they lost hope. In that Barcelona, Philip V deployed all his brute force to make radical changes and eliminate freedoms, rights and festivals; he even wanted to change the name of the city.
Albert Garcia Espuche: "Philip V removed the chairs from the City Hall because he had a morbid obsession with revenge."
Historian and novelist. He published 'After'.
BarcelonaAfter forty thousand bombs and bullets, no home in Barcelona remained unscathed. That ruined and silent Barcelona that continued to resist is the one described, with his characteristic precision, by Albert Garcia Espuche (Barcelona, 1951), in After (Símbolo Editores). Through the eyes of a notary, the historian, architect, and novelist wanders the streets, enters houses, and sifts through inventories to discuss what happened after September 11, 1714. Without the historian's research, which has produced a vast body of work on the 16th and 17th centuries, and his interpretation of social, economic, and cultural life, the Born archaeological site would have been preserved. Garcia Espuche explains that he cannot stop writing and continues to delve passionately into the city's past. For the first time, he co-authored the book with his wife, the art historian Núria Rivero, who died in 2024.
For the first time, he has been able to include her as a co-author.
— Nuria was a curator at the Picasso Museum, the Marès Museum, and the History Museum. Finally, she worked in the Heritage Department of the Barcelona Institute of Culture, but she never accepted any management position. She wanted to dedicate herself, wholeheartedly, to the study of collections. She put the same enthusiasm into the books she edited for me, or rather, that she actually wrote with me. But she never wanted to sign any of them, and I had to limit myself to acknowledging her help in the acknowledgments. In a blatant act of "betrayal for love," I decided that After We would both sign it, and that the book launch would be a tribute to his professional career.
They made a good team.
— Yes, absolutely. I also tried to help her, but she did it with infinitely greater dedication. It's a gift to have a critical and rigorous yet supportive and kind eye, a blessing that has improved all the works I've published.
In After It delves into the history of 1714 through the eyes of a notary, Josep Llaurador, and other characters. It explores microhistory and provides many details about daily life. The notary meticulously records everything. Is that why this figure appeals to you so much?
— The Historical Archive of Notarial Records, belonging to the College of Notaries of Barcelona, is the second most important in Europe and possesses an extraordinary wealth of documents. Over the years, I have supplemented the vast amount of notarial data with documents such as hearth tax records and land registry records, which provide a comprehensive overview. In any case, working with the details is fundamental: it's essential not to let the trees obscure the forest, as the saying goes, but it's also true that without knowing all the trees well, one cannot understand the forest.
Isn't there a risk of excluding those who don't go to a notary and, therefore, not representing a specific social segment?
— Notaries were frequented not only by people with property or prominent businesses, but also by people of relatively humble means. And this provides very rich and reliable information.
Choose as one of the protagonists a slave with enviable blond mustaches and an innate talent for music.
— A mustache, indeed, more splendid than any of the viceroys'. I found it interesting that he was someone from outside, from Turkey, and an outcast. I loved the idea that a slave was the least traitorous of all. A slave who, once freed, becomes a greater defender of the Constitutions of Catalonia than anyone else. This ties into a thread of the novel and the period: that there was resistance, despite the defeat and the brutal repression. After September 11, 1714, the Bourbons acted, in large part, out of revenge. The truth is that it wasn't entirely justified to build a huge citadel to control a city whose population had neither strength nor resources, and could barely feed themselves and rebuild the houses destroyed by the bombs. In fact, the people of Barcelona thought that the victorious military would not be able to do what they ended up doing: demolish a thousand houses and make 17% of the city's surface area disappear, the equivalent of any of the other prominent Catalan towns, such as Girona, Tarragona or Lleida.
Why was it so important for Philip V to remove the chairs from Barcelona City Hall?
— It was the space where the Consell de Cent met, in the City Hall, and, as the repressive text states, it was shaped like a "theater." It's not hard to imagine. Philip V removed the chairs from the City Hall because he had a morbid obsession with revenge. It was a symbol he found unbearable, and he wanted to standardize everything to the style of Castilian municipalities.
Another punishment was to remove the windows and doors from some houses.
— It was one form of punishment, among a wide variety of methods of repression. The Bourbons did seemingly absurd things, such as banning Carnival and certain games. In any case, as one of the play's characters states, "justice is the form of punishment decided by those in power."
Was the goal to leave the city without memory or traditions?
— It has always struck me deeply to see how easily collective memory can be erased. With the construction of the Ciutadella, two very important neighborhoods of Barcelona disappeared: La Ribera, home to fishermen and sailors, and Vilanova dels Molins del Mar, a kind of miniature Venice, with an urban layout based on the extraordinary control of the water from the Rec Comtal canal. Both neighborhoods not only ceased to exist physically, but they have also been erased from the collective memory. Nobody remembers that a little Venice once existed in Barcelona.
There was even an advisor to Philip V, the Bishop of Segorbe, Diego Muñoz Vaquerizo, who proposed replacing the name of Barcelona with Santa Eulalia de la Ribera. He suggested this because it humiliated a city that had "republican aspirations."
— A great sin indeed, the republics. It is quite ironic to want to impose the name of Santa Eulalia de la Ribera on Barcelona, when they had demolished the Ribera neighborhood.
In the book he states that in Barcelona in 1714, proximity between people of diverse social and economic conditions was not a problem.
— It was a peculiarity of Barcelona. I studied the inhabitants of Montcada Street in great detail over several centuries precisely to emphasize this point. It is true that nobles lived on this street, commonly considered the most aristocratic area, but also quite a few humble people.
Is this peculiarity reflected in the way of governing? In the importance given to rights?
— I'll share the very illustrative case of a widow, Jerónima Grimosachs. Her husband had died on the city walls defending Barcelona. Their house was completely uninhabitable because of the bombs; she had moved to a convent, and all the family's belongings were scattered throughout the city. But she had to comply with the Constitutions of Catalonia, which stipulated that the widow had to make an inventory. post mortem Regarding the deceased husband's property, she had to prove, before a notary, that she was not committing any fraud, that she was acting with absolute propriety, and that she was not keeping anything that did not belong to her. In other words, she always had to do what was required and prove it before a notary.
It presents cases of women who experience difficulties of various kinds.
— As is easy to understand, in that historical period women often suffered under the excessive authority of fathers and husbands. However, they had avenues for seeking negotiated solutions and for defending themselves in court. Some conversations among women in the play reveal real cases in which young women successfully rejected husbands their parents wanted to impose on them.