Which flower do you identify Mercè Rodoreda's work with?

BarcelonaBees, drones and the occasional absent-minded fly fly over the flowers that can be seen in the garden dedicated to pollinating again, with delight. Mercè Rodoreda (1908-1983). This space of calm and bursting beauty has just reopened its doors at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans coinciding with the inauguration of a room also dedicated to the author of Diamond Square and Broken mirror, where you can see several of the author's typewriters, glasses, some of the enigmatic paintings he painted and even an orange blouse that the writer wore in a photo taken in the 1970s, when she was already an indispensable literary reference.

Four decades after her death, Mercè Rodoreda is "the most universal author we have in contemporary Catalan literature," recalls Teresa Cabré, president of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans. In addition to being translated into forty languages, Rodoreda's popularity has spanned generations and, recently, has inspired the novel Mercedes and Juan, ofEva Comas-Arnal –last Proa award– and has inspired the album The salamander, by the duo L'Arannà, whose members, Anna Sala and Lara Magrinyà, have presented to an audience of experts in the writer's work, including Marta Pessarrodona, author of Mercè Rodoreda and her time (Rosa dels Vents, 2005), the philologist Mariàngela Vilallonga, who is preparing a book about the writer's relationship with Carme Manrubia during the last years of her life, in Romanyà de la Selva, and Irene Zurrón, Documenta 2024 award winner and Rodoreda scholar: she has dedicated her ecocritical thesis to her.

A garden with a long history

"It's hard to find anyone in Catalonia who hasn't read Rodoreda," says Ernest Urtasun, Minister of Culture. Sònia Hernández Almodóvar, Minister of Culture of the Generalitat, praises the "intimate, rigorous, and educational" space dedicated to Rodoreda, where you can also discover some interesting facts: 150 municipalities have a street named after the writer, but also three schools, one high school, four library trains, and even... "–What is dying? –Becoming a star." This brief dialogue ofAloma can also be read in the exhibition space, which is complemented, on the first floor of the IEC, by a garden with examples of almost twenty flowers featured in Rodoreda's work: all are accompanied by fragments in which they are mentioned.

"This garden has a long history," recalls Mariàngela Vilallonga. "It was in 1998 that Maria Àngels Anglada sent a letter to Carles Miralles, then secretary of the IEC, in which she asked him to incorporate some plants from the Romanyà garden into the Mercè Rodoreda garden. Broken mirrorVilallonga, then vice-president of the Institute, helped "to materialize" the proposal: "In addition to adding the scientific name of each plant, I looked for fragments related to each of them that appeared in the work."

A walk through this new version of the garden – which had to close at the end of 2012 – roses, geraniums and cinerarias with Garden by the sea, the lilacs and the laurel with Broken mirror, the dwarf pomegranate tree with How much, how much war and camellias, carolinas and daisies with The street of camelliasThere is even a small pond with water lilies, which appear in Aloma: "Some water flowers had opened inside the fountain," it reads. Sitting on the railing, she touched one and then hid her face in her hands. She didn't dare look at the sun like when she was little because they said that only those who hadn't committed any sin could look at it." The prose of Travel and flowers are represented by the fragrant jasmines. The only thing missing are the ever-present wisteria of Death and Spring, the author's darkest and most radical novel: have not been incorporated into the new version of the Rodoredian garden so that the wisteria or Wisteria floribunda It is currently considered an invasive species.