Guadalajara, Jal., The Catalan writer Eduardo Mendoza received the Carlos Fuentes medal yesterday from Silvia Lemus, widow of the Mexican novelist, during the inauguration of the Literary Salon at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL).
The ceremony was also attended by Marisol Schultz, director of the bookseller’s meeting, and José Trinidad Padilla López, president of the FIL.
A key figure in contemporary literature in the Spanish language, Mendoza offered a conference focused on Barcelona, the guest city of honor, and its rich literary tradition as a cradle of writers.
“If I am here and they grant me the honor of being the first to speak, it is due, among other things, to the fact that I am perhaps one of the last representatives of the golden age of Barcelona literature,” he declared before an attentive audience.
With his characteristic humor and wit, he described the metropolis as the central axis in some of his stories. “It is the true driving force of the narrative and the individuals are just pretexts to show their future.” It evoked the transformation of the Spanish city over the centuries, from its Carthaginian roots to modernity marked by the world’s fairs of the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution, which shaped its unique character and architecture.
“Barcelona is feminine. And it is so for a completely empty reason. Simply because in some languages with Latin roots, the ending a is assigned to the feminine.”
He remembered his childhood after the civil war and the arrival of Latin American writers who renewed local literature. “It was a unique, extraordinary and almost magical moment… a bath of enthusiasm, of hope, in which those of us who were beginning to write and live there were participants.”
He also told stories about the founding of the city, the Carthaginians and Hamilcar Barca, as well as historical anecdotes about bandits, Don Quixote and Sancho, and Cervantes’ time in Barcelona.
He highlighted the influence of popular culture and cinema in his training; mentioned María Félix, Pedro Infante and Cantinflas, whom he honored for the happiness they gave him.
In his speech, he recalled literary figures and historical moments that forged the identity of Barcelona, the industriousness of the Catalans, their resilience and the city’s ability to reinvent itself.
“I would like this intervention to be an inauguration and also a closing, the closing of a history that has already passed and that now gives way to the present and the future.”