Since, At the end of 2020, Mercè Ibarz (Saidí, 1954) published Triptych of the Earth in Anagrama —which brings together two of his best-known books, The withdrawn land (Quema Notebooks, 1994) and The wheat palm (Quema Notebooks, 1995), and the unpublished unfinished work–His work has progressed in two phases: from the revision and expansion of some of his emblematic titles, such as Urban Tales (Anagrama, 2022) and Portrait of Mercè Rodoreda (Empúries, 2022), and new developments such as the trials Rodoreda, a map (Barcino, 2022) and Don't think, just look: in front of the work of art (Anagrama, 2024) and the anthology Modern Pioneers (Arola, 2020), which brings together plays by a dozen Catalan authors, including Carme Karr, Rosa Maria Arquimbau, and Víctor Català. Now she publishes A girl in the city (Anagrama), where he recalls how he arrived in Barcelona in the early 1970s and everything he has found since then: love, friendship, work and his literary vocation.

"I have no idea. I'd rather Franco die than be there." loose, slack and pendulum"He had to die one way or another." Here's the thing. Raimon's responseOn Wednesday, in response to a question from Helena Garcia Melero in the Everything is movingabout what he did when Franco died. It wasn't the only moment that made the audience laugh, even though he was talking about censorship during the dictatorship. But, really, I suppose that's just how it is: as absurd as it was, humor emerged. The writer and screenwriter Anna Manso, who was on the set, asked him what he would say to young people who downplay what the dictatorship and Francoism represented, and Raimon replied that it wouldn't do much for their parents—"we didn't listen to them either," he said, "when we were young." That's why he suggested it should be explained properly in schools, "where they learn." I was watching on TV, to talk about Mercè Ibarz's latest book, A girl in the city (Anagrama), a chronicle of her arrival in Barcelona (she is from Saidí), at seventeen years old. Raimon's words led me to a passage in the book where I think Ibarz says something important: "I often ask myself how it is that the word dictatorship So little has been heard and written about it in the years since. We say and write postwar period, Francoism, the regime, but dictatorship Not much. The emptiness of this non-word has permeated journalism and literature itself for decades. As if it were a generational word that didn't apply to those born after the seventies. Well, we're doing great. What could that mean? Isn't it even worth thinking about? Of course it is, it's worth thinking about. Once again, the importance of calling things by their name, of using words that have "full" content and a clear meaning.

Often, those of us who practice literary criticism rack our brains trying to find a good description of the perspective from which the authors of the works we review write. A girl in the cityIn her latest book, Mercè Ibarz (Saidí, 1954), the author herself explains: "I write from my own experience, in the first person, thanks to contemporary art and documentary." And that is precisely what she has done since then. The withdrawn land (Cuadernos Crema, 1993) until the recent essay Don't think, just look (Anagrama, 2024) passing through In the city under construction (Cream Notebooks, 2002) and Street Fever (Crema Notebooks, 2005), renamed together as Urban Tales in the edition that Anagrama put into circulation three years ago.