If one day, by chance, I happen to be on the subway with Màrius Serra (Barcelona, ​​1963), it's very likely that he has a notebook open in his hands and is writing frenetically. Don't even think about interrupting his creative flow: you could break the torrent of words that has ended up shaping a monumental novel like The misunderstanding (Proa, 2026). "A half-hour subway ride can be very productive," he says. "On a commuter train, the result can be spectacular. I like to practice writing on the move mainly for two reasons: first, because I'm away from my usual workplace; second, because I'm writing by hand, and I'm aware that what I'm doing is a first draft, something that gives me..."

The writer Màrius Serra "deeply hated the esplais" and only went for a while because his parents sent him "to see if they would straighten him out." It's all a bit fuzzy for him, but he does remember an excursion to Cerdanyola where a girl kept coming up to him and tickling him. Five years later, one night while he was putting together the window display for his shoe store, he saw a "spectacular girl" walk by, and Serra didn't hesitate to approach her and suggest they go for a drink. He didn't remember, but she told him about it over a drink in a Hawaiian bar: it was the girl who had been tickling him. "We got into it with a phrase that Mercè has always remembered, and which was very unromantic: 'Do you want to mess things up?'" Mercè was keen, and now they've been "messing things up" for 40 years.

The voice and linguistic wit of Màrius Serra (Barcelona, 1963) are part of the Catalan cultural landscape. 18 years of Enigmàrius On Catalunya Ràdio, 35 years of crossword puzzles The Vanguard, five thousand articles and thirty books are some of his calling cards. Now he has just published an updated reissue of Verbàlia, the country where Màrius discovered the pleasure of playing with words. The first time this book was published, in 2000, his son Lluís had just been born, whose severe encephalopathy prevented him from speaking or walking for nine years.