The magic of the Gabriel García Márquez de La Verneda library, “on the podium of the most visited” in just four months

The Gabriel García Márquez library, located in the Sant Martí district of Barcelona, ​​continues to be a phenomenon four months after its inauguration. Visitors come from all corners of the planet, such as the NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg, who tweeted his impressed experience, without neglecting the neighbors, such as some ladies from the neighborhood who have baptized it as the ‘Guggenheim of La Verneda’ by the avant-garde of design. “We are happily overwhelmed,” explains its director, Neus Castellano, to NIUS, while listening to the recording of an interview for the television program Página Dos. “It has been a media phenomenon because of the building that is all made of wood, that is dedicated to Latin American literature and that the photos come out really cute on Instagram,” she explains. Its inauguration coincided with the 40th anniversary of Gabriel García Márquez receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. The facility, designed by Suma Arquitectura, is made of wood and glass and has become the third largest library in the city, with 3,300 square meters of surface: “It has been very well received in the neighbourhood. Before, there was a 300-meter library for 53,000 inhabitants. Now the space has multiplied by 11,” says Castellano. It receives a thousand people a day: “We are on the podium of the most visited”, she adds. Reading in Caribbean hammocks A bust of Gabo arrived from Cartagena de Indias and carved by Óscar Noriega, the sculptor who created the busts of the writer and his wife for their tombs, greets the visitor. The space invites you to read in rocking chairs and wing chairs. There is also a hammock – the typical Caribbean hammock – which, according to the staff, is taken care of in the late afternoon. The Latin American fiction fund is the richest in the city: “It goes beyond the generation of García Márquez, Borges and Vargas Llosa. We buy novels from foreign labels that have not been published in Spain,” adds Castellano. All of Gabo’s production is on loan: “We always have his works on loan, the neighbors have been interested in his work,” he explains. The list of illustrious visitors is getting longer and longer: “This week we will celebrate an act Liber Fair and the Colombian ambassador will come,” he explains. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg has noted of the space that it is “magical” in a “working class neighborhood”. In June it was visited by contemporary authors such as Laura Restrepo, Martín Caparrós or Vanessa Lendoño in a contemporary literature festival that attracted 700 people. The Gabriel Garcia Marquez Library just opened in a working class neighborhood in Barcelona. It’s magical. It’s real. And it’s the kind of place that makes you wonder why every city doesn’t give its resident palaces for the people. #library pic.twitter.com/u1lgxGWDce— Eric Klinenberg (@EricKlinenberg) September 21, 2022 The generation of writers who lived in BarcelonaThe space has not been without controversy. Some voices have criticized that the library honored a writer instead of a female writer: “When Gabo died in 2014, the Barcelona City Council fully decided to give him the city medal and that the next library bear his name,” explains Castellano. Gabriel García Márquez lived in Barcelona between 1967 and 1975. He was in the city with his then friend Mario Vargas Llosa and also with Carlos Fuentes, welcomed by the literary agent Carmen Balcells, who predicted the ‘boom’ of Latin American literature. The writer’s family still has the apartment in Barcelona: “I know that they are satisfied with the project,” says the director of the library. The workers acknowledge that they are adapting to the building, built without a single brick: “Sometimes we hear the creaking wood, because it grows and shrinks and has its maintenance challenge, but it’s a modern building and it hasn’t given us any problems yet,” admits the director. The Gabriel García Márquez Library is also the first to launch a study of radio, “which will be the voice of Barcelona’s libraries”, and a board game room: “It is an experiment, we must innovate without neglecting the fact that users are looking for a table, a chair to study and silence” says its director.