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Food and wine
Colman Andrews
Catalan
Cuisine.
The best available –
possibly the
only
available – English-
language book dealing with Spain’s
most adventurous regional cuisine.
Full of historical and anecdotal detail,
it’s a pleasure to read, let alone cook
from (no pictures, though).
Penelope Casas
The Foods and
Wines of Spain
. Casas roams across
every region of Spain in this classic
Spanish cookery book, including
the best dishes that Catalunya has to
offer. Her
Paella
and
Tapas:The Little
Dishes of Spain
cover the rest of the
bases.
Jan Read
Wines of Spain
. All you
need to know to sort out your
Penedès from your Priorat – an
explanation of regions and producers,
plus tasting notes and tips for wine
tourists.
Catalan literature and writers
Catalan was established as a literary language as early as the thirteenth century, and
a
golden age
of medieval Catalan literature followed, lasting until the mid-sixteenth
century, with another cultural and literary flowering in the nineteenth century known
as the
Renaixença
(Renaissance). However, this long pedigree has suffered two
major interruptions: first, the rise of Castile and later Bourbon rule, which saw the
Catalan language eclipsed and then suppressed; and a similar suppression under
Franco, when there was a ban on Catalan books and publications. In the post-Civil
War period, there was some relaxation of the ban, but it’s only been since the return of
democracy to Spain that Catalan literature has once again been allowed to flourish.
Catalan and Spanish speakers and readers are best served by the literature, since
there’s little still in translation – Amazon (
W
www.amazon.com) is a good first stop
for the translated authors mentioned below. The vernacular works of mystic and
philosopher
Ramon Llull
(1233–1316) mark the onset of a true Catalan literature
– his
Blanquerna
was one of the first books to be written in any Romance language,
while the later chivalric epic
Tirant lo Blanc
(
The White Tyrant
) by
Joanot Martorell
(1413–68) represents a high point of the golden age. None of the works of the leading
lights of the nineteenth-century
Renaixença
are readily available in translation, and it’s
to
Solitud
(
Solitude
) by
Victor Català
(1869–1966) that you have to look for the most
important pre-Civil War Catalan novel. This tragic tale of a woman’s life and sexual
passions in a Catalan mountain village was first published in 1905, pseudonymously
by Caterina Albert i Paradís, who lived most of her life in rural northern Catalunya.
During and after the Civil War, many authors found themselves under forcible
or self-imposed exile, including perhaps Spain’s most important modern novel-
ist,
Juan Goytisolo
(born Barcelona, 1931), a bitter enemy of the Franco regime
(which banned his books). Goytisolo has spent most of his life abroad – in Paris
Novels set in Barcelona
Bernado Atxaga
The Lone Man
.
The noted Basque writer set his well-
received psychological thriller during
the 1982World Cup, when two ETA
gunmen hole up in a Barcelona hotel.
John Bryson
To the Death,Amic
.
Barcelona, under siege during the
Civil War, is the backdrop for a
coming-of-age novel recounting
the adventures of ten-year-old twins
Enric and Josep.
Miguel Cervantes
Don Quix-
ote.
Barcelona is the only city that
Cervantes gives its real name in his
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