The secrets of Macondo are hidden in Barcelona: the García Márquez Library is born, specializing in Latin American literature

Five butterflies stamped in bronze surround the bust of Gabriel García Márquez, like the yellow butterflies that chased Mauricio Babilonia, in

.

From the height of a shelf, the sculpture donated by different institutions in the Colombian Caribbean observes the new library built in honor of the author of

: the García Márquez library in the Sant Martí district (Barcelona), with a collection of 40,000 documents, specializing in Latin American literature.

Facility number 40 in the Catalan capital, which also has a "multifunctional" vocation, will also host the first community radio station of the Barcelona library network.

In honor of the fictional town that appears in various works by García Márquez, this will be called

.

The matte gold colors of the bust created by Colombian artist Óscar Noriega give “a Caribbean note” to the “Nordic” design of the library, according to its director, Neus Castellano.

The building, designed by the architects Elena Orte and Guillermo Sevillano (Suma Arquitectes), displays a structure where wood predominates and large windows that determine the diaphanous character of the space.

With almost 4,000 square meters, it has been conceived as a set of stacked books whose folds can be sensed from the outside;

and its multifunctional character is distributed differently in each of its six floors.

Detail of the new Garcia Marquez Library, located in the Sant Marti neighborhood (Barcelona)©Consuelo Bautista

In addition to the actual area for reading and consulting the bibliographic collections, the new García Márquez has an assembly room, a kitchen space, the Antonio Herrera Associative Historical Archive or a floor with documents on science and technology.

There is also a room dedicated to the comic artist Francisco Ibánez, a resident of Sant Martí and creator of characters such as Mortadelo and Filemón, which will house some 500 titles with stories starring his characters.

“The classic image of libraries as a temple of knowledge has changed”, argues Ferran Burguillos, manager of Barcelona Libraries: “Now libraries are more focused on cultural promotion, although with differentiated spaces.

So,

The ephemeris games have wanted the new facility to be inaugurated 40 years after Gabo won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, a time after he lived for more than five years in the Catalan capital (since 1967 to 1975).

He was not the only one.

The idyll of American writers with Barcelona, ​​the city that promoted the so-called Latin American

at the hands of literary agents such as Carmen Balcells or the Seix Barral publishing house, has been constant up to the present.

Hence, the objective of the library is to promote this relationship and seek to become a "center of irradiation" in Barcelona of the melting pot of cultures that weave Latin America.

The specialized fund is decisive in this regard;

but they will not be limited to it.

The García Márquez will also host a series of activities whose organization will go hand in hand with Casa Amèrica Catalunya.

On the immediate horizon is the celebration of KM Amèrica, the Latin American literature festival that will bring together 22 writers from 11 countries in two venues from June 16 to 19, including the new García Márquez Library.

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Barcelona renews its Latin American idyll with a new literary festival

The new Sant Martí library, which is estimated to serve almost 55,000 residents directly, wants to create "a new centrality" in the city, as indicated by the library consortium.

Burguillos points out that the project has gone ahead with some 12 million euros.

Its dimensions make it the third largest library facility in Barcelona, ​​after Jaume Fuster (Plaza Lesseps) and Ignasi Iglésias-Can Fabra (Sant Andreu).

With its opening this Saturday, the García Márquez also crowns one of the objectives that the library plan had outlined in 1998, when the city had 18 of these publicly owned spaces: to reach 40 facilities in full operation.

It is expected that next year the construction of one more will begin, one of the great cultural projects of the city, postponed since the end of the 20th century: the Provincial Library of Barcelona, ​​owned by the state, which will be built on a plot next to the Station from France.

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