The Inventive Crime Writers of Catalonia

Abstract

Crime International BY J. MADISON DAVIS THE INVENTIVE CRIME WRITERS OF CATALONIA To say theCatalans have been tenacious with theirnative language and culture only partly gives themcredit forhow dif ficult thishas been over the years. Catalonia became independent in 989, and Catalan reached itsheight as a literary language in the four teenthand fifteenth centuries.How ever, theCastilian dialect began to dominate the literatureof theIberian peninsula in the consolidation of thekingdom of Spain. France bit off thenorthern territoriesofCatalonia in 1659, and Louis XIV banned the use of the language in legal docu ments in 1700. Then the Kingdom of Catalonia and Aragon lost its independence in 1719, after ithad sidedwith the losing side in the War of the Spanish Succession. Periods of nationalistic revival came and went, but afterBarcelona became the capital and one of the last redouts of the Spanish Republic, theFranco dictatorship suppressed the Cata lan language and any activities that could be taken to support Catalan nationalism. Poetry and otherbooks continued tobe published under the watchful eye of the fascist authori ties, however, and when the Franco regime ended, a new era of Catalan literature erupted. Now, there are many publishers in the language, and many popular books are pub lished inboth Spanish and Catalan, including translations fromEnglish authors. As David Leavitt remarked, "Still, Catalan writers face a daunt ing choice. The temptation towrite 101 Wprld Literature Today 3 in Spanish?a language spoken the world over?can be hard to resist when one's mother tongue is under stood only in an extremely circum scribed area."1 That they continue to do so is the result of more than just stub bornness. In a world of declining minority languages, Catalan remains strongpartly because itdoes have a strong literaryhistory?no less than Shakespeare, the great pickpocket of storymaterial, is known to have stolen from the Catalan chivalric romance Tirant lo Blanc. Another point in Catalan's favor is that its resemblance to French and Spanish makes it understandable to many speakers of those languages and not as alien as, for example, Basque. More important, however, Catalo nian artists and writers have not pre served the vigor of their language and culture by turning inward and recycling thepast. Theymaintain the vitality of their culture by embrac ing and digesting thenew. Catalans have looked outward for inspira tion,particularly toward Paris, but taken that inspiration home and made it their own. Barcelona ismost visibly one of the great cosmopoli tan cities of modernism, of course, with itsbuildings by Gaudi. After moving thereearly inhis formative years, Picasso regarded the city as his truehome, and JoanMiro was born there. As is true ofmany authoritar ian governments, the Franco regime did not encourage crime fiction and heavily censored that which saw light. In the opinion ofManuel Quinto, the fascists did not allow discussion of three things that are essential to the Spanish conception of the novela negra: "Freudian analy sis of characters, political corrup tion, and the economic tentacles of power."2 When Spain was restored to democracy in 1978, however, Bar celona became the most important center forevolving not justa Catalan but a Spanish form of crime fic tion.Manuel Vazquez Montalb?n (1939-2003) is themost famous of the Barcelonan crime authors to emerge in the late 1970s. Born in the city,he "is notable because he takes his characters, locations and backgrounds from experience, from the streets and barrios of a cityhe loves."3 Though writing in Castil ian,Vazquez Montalb?n refused to work within the conventional forms of any genre and, like many Catalan crimewriters, experimentedwith the boundaries. To this end, he created the idiosyncraticdetective and gour mand Pepe Carvalho. Carvalho's passionate obsession with foodwas said to reflectthe author's own and may have contributed to the inter national success of the novels. These are much more than harmless cozies with a few recipes appended, how ever. As Quinto implies, social and political commentary is the essen tial saffron in the paella of Span ish crime writing. Crime writing without these elements is regarded as trivialbymost Spanish commen tators, including Vazquez Montal b?n himself,with Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie often regarded as mere puzzle-makers...