Сантьяго Ронкальоло: Barcelona Noir

Adriana V. Lópezis the founding editor of Críticas magazine and edited the story collection Fifteen Candles. López’s journalism has appeared in The New York Times and the Washington Post, and her essays and fiction have been published in anthologies such as Border-Line Personalities, Colonize This! and Juicy Mangoes. Currently, she is translating Susana Fortes’s novel Waiting for Robert Capa, and she divides her time between New York and Madrid.

Andreu Martínis the author of various novels, including Prótesis (made into a film directed by Vicente Aranda) and El hombre de la navaja , which have both won numerous prizes including the Premio Círculo del Crimen and the Premio Hammet. He also creates screenplays, television scripts, plays, and children’s literature. A regular contributor to El Periódico and La Vanguardia , his most recent novel, Bellísimas personas , won the Premio Ateneo de Sevilla in 2000. He lives in Barcelona.

Valerie Milesis an American writer, translator, and publisher who has been living in Spain for over twenty years. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, La Vanguardia, and Granta en español . After directing the imprint Emecé for some years and then the Madrid-based Alfaguara, she has recently launched a new publishing house, Duomo Ediciones, for the Italian group Mauri Spagnol. She lives in Barcelona.

Imma Monsówas born in the western Catalonian city of Lleida. Her novels and stories, originally written in Catalan, have been translated into various languages and awarded prizes such as Premi Ciutat de Barcelona, Premi de l’Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana, and the Premi Prudenci Bertrana, among others. She lives in Barcelona.

Achy Obejasis the translator (into Spanish) for Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize — winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao . She is also the author of several books, including the highly acclaimed novels Ruins and Days of Awe; and editor of Havana Noir . Obejas is currently the Sor Juana Writer in Residence at DePaul University in Chicago. She was born in Havana.

Carmen Ospinadirects the digital program at Random House Mondadori in Barcelona. Born and raised in Colombia, she lived in New York for eight years where she co-edited Críticas magazine and worked as an editor at Umbrage Editions and a freelance journalist for World Press Review and NY1 Noticias. She has lived in Barcelona since 2006 and rides her bike every day.

Santiago Roncagliolo, born in Lima, Peru, in 1975, is the author of the political thriller Abril rojo, which won Spain’s prestigious Alfaguara Prize in 2006. His first novel, Pudor, was adapted to the big screen in 2007. His most recent offering is the sci-fi novel Tan cerca de la vida . His books have sold more than 150,000 copies in the Spanish-speaking world and have been translated into more than thirteen languages. He lives in Barcelona.

Teresa Solanawas born in Barcelona in 1962 and published her first novel, Un crim imperfecte , winner of the Brigada 21 award, in 2006. She subsequently published the novel Drecera al paradís and the story collection Set casos de sang i fetge i una història d’amor . Her work has been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian. Her latest novel, Negres tempestes , recently received the Crims de Tinta prize for the best noir novel in Catalan.

For Héctor Tenorio Muñozcota, a friend.

Barcelona had already been occupied for twenty years by illegitimate Francoist forces who had usurped power from the republic after three years of civil war. The world was a gray place, and the neighborhood of Sant Gervasi, where the protagonist of this story comes from, was a repulsive place, for more than any other reason because it always stayed exactly the same. It was the same no matter what. Seemingly safe, bourgeoisie, flexible. Everything was understood. It was very similar in its warmth, its tranquility, and its silence to many other neighborhoods in other cities in the world. This is the main setting for this story, though war, exile, and fascism have expelled it very far away from itself. Now Sant Gervasi is in Mexico. At the time of the story, Barcelona was both here and there. Sant Gervasi was a place divided by those who left and those who stayed: twenty years after a war between brethren.

Ten years after Germany declared itself the Federal Republic of Germany.

Unless it says otherwise, all the quotes are from the Mexican newspaper El Universal . They come from the B section published between September 14–20, 1959.

The name given to six of the cadets who fought in defense of Chapultepec Castle during the War of Intervention against the United States (1847–1848). Their names, which we can all recite from memory, are Agustín Melgar, Fernando Montes de Oca, Francisco Márquez, Juan de la Barrera, Juan Francisco Escutia, and Vicente Suárez. The cadets’ deaths, like so many other historic events, are enveloped in all sorts of legends.

Both countries were right, though neither ever acknowledged this. In fact, the space satellite Lunik 2, which had left earth September 13, 1959, with the goal of landing on the moon, crashed into the Sea of Serenity. So, in a way, it did get to the moon. But it didn’t actually land.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was born April 15, 1894, in the mining village of Kalinovka, and died September 11, 1971, in Moscow. At twenty-three, he had joined the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. And from that point on, he fought with the Red Army during the Civil War (1918–1920), had a political career in the Ukraine, was first secretary for the Moscow region and the Ukraine, tried to suppress Ukrainian nationalists, directed resistance against the Germans during World War II (1939–1945), and was elected prime minister of the U.S.S.R. He used his power to reconcile with Tito’s Yugoslavia, to break with Mao Zedong’s China, to settle Siberia, and to aid the Hungarian government against an anticommunist uprising. In 1962, he was accused of encouraging a cult of personality, just as had happened with Stalin, and he was expelled from the Communist Party and forced to resign from his post.