"These days I am rereading the first attempt at a biography of Josep Maria de Sagarra (1894-1961). Unfortunately, our country still does not have a proper biography of the writer," explains the theater director Xavier Albertí. The book that has him captivated and that he recommends is Sagarra, seen by his intimates (Edhasa, 1982), which the journalist Lluís Permanyer (1939-2025) published four decades ago based on testimonies from people in the writer's closest circle. "Lluís Permanyer passed away recently, and I think we need to re-evaluate the work of documenting his personal relationship with Sagarra and everything he tells us about it. It is an essential book for understanding Sagarra's figure and work, and at the same time, for dispelling a great number of prejudices that this man carries with him," claims Albertí, who this summer has presented two shows at the Dansàneu festival.

Living next to Lluís Permanyer has given me the opportunity to have conversations standing up, on the street, when we bumped into each other in the neighborhood. You could sense the polite forms and rhythms of a Barcelona of the Right in the Eixample, from when he played in the gardens of the car-free Gran Via, between Rambla Catalunya and Passeig de Gràcia, and his father was a Barça director. The conversations had a certain order: a smiling introduction of mutual recognition, a biting critique of the City Hall's latest invention, and a somewhat hurried farewell in the style of "Have a good time, the rain is falling," because they were waiting for him at Radio Barcelona or in some university lecture hall to give a lecture. He liked to walk everywhere to prove to everyone that Barcelona was still a city.walkable.

He wanted to be a diplomat to escape the Barcelona oppressed by Franco and ended up becoming its most illustrious chronicler. Lluís Permanyer died this Wednesday, victim of a heart attack, at the age of 86. Author of more than eighty books on the Catalan capital, he leaves behind an immense legacy of research and dissemination, as well as the fond memory of his characteristic figure – always elegant – strolling with an attentive gaze through squares and streets. His bushy mustache, which he began to comb looking upwards after the dictator's death, was part of the Barcelona landscape.