Mercè Ibarz: The City That Made Her Write

At a recent reading club event, author Mercè Ibarz set a collaborative tone from the very beginning. "The books belong to the readers," she declared, inviting the audience to speak more than she would. Yet as the conversation progressed, she gradually revealed the intricate layers of her latest work, Una noia a la ciutat (Anagrama).

This new publication functions as a cartographic memoir, mapping the geography of memory and emotion. At its heart lies a profound exploration of love—not just romantic, but the deep affection for a city that fundamentally reshaped her worldview. The narrative traces her journey from rural roots to urban identity, a transformation that has defined both her life and her literary voice.

The year 1971 marked a pivotal moment when Ibarz first stepped into Barcelona. This wasn't merely a geographical relocation; it was the beginning of a profound personal metamorphosis. The city became more than a backdrop—it actively shaped her perception of the world and her place within it.

Central to this urban experience was her relationship with L., the man she met shortly after arriving. Their connection became the emotional anchor of her Barcelona years, a partnership that spanned decades and influenced her understanding of love itself. The memoir weaves together these two narratives: the discovery of a city and the discovery of a life partner.

The book's structure reflects this dual journey, serving as both personal history and urban exploration. Each chapter navigates the intersection of private memory and public space, showing how the city's streets, neighborhoods, and rhythms became inseparable from her own story.

Despite Barcelona's profound influence, Ibarz maintains that her creative core remains tied to her origins. "La terra m'ha fet escriptora, la ciutat m'ha donat la força per escriure" (The land made me a writer, the city gave me the strength to write), she explained, echoing a sentiment from her book. This duality captures the essence of her artistic identity.

The rural landscape of Saidí, her birthplace, provided the foundational material for her writing. The connection to land, to place, to the rhythms of nature—these elements formed her earliest understanding of storytelling. Yet it was the urban environment that offered the necessary distance, perspective, and creative energy to transform those foundational experiences into literature.

This tension between origin and destination, between the pastoral and the metropolitan, creates a rich tension in her work. The memoir doesn't simply document a life; it explores how different geographies shape consciousness and how memory itself becomes a form of mapping.

The event also featured a reading of Maya Angelou's poem "When Great Trees Fall" (1928-2014), a work that resonates with themes of loss, memory, and transformation. Angelou's words—"When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills tremble"—speak to the profound impact of significant lives and the spaces they leave behind.

The poem's imagery of natural upheaval mirrors the emotional landscape Ibarz navigates in her memoir. Just as Angelou describes how "the air becomes rare, sterile" when great souls depart, Ibarz explores how certain losses and departures reshape our internal geography. The reading served as a literary counterpoint to her own narrative of arrival and connection.

Both works, though different in form and origin, share a preoccupation with how we carry forward the presence of those who have shaped us—whether through love, mentorship, or the simple fact of their existence in our lives.

What emerges from Ibarz's reflection is a vision of writing as an act of cartography. Una noia a la ciutat doesn't merely recount events; it maps the emotional and psychological terrain of a life transformed by place. The city becomes a character, a force, a source of creative power.

The memoir's structure—part personal history, part urban exploration, part love story—reflects the complexity of how we actually experience our lives. We don't live in straight lines or simple narratives, but in overlapping layers of memory, relationship, and environment.

For Ibarz, Barcelona represents not just a location but a state of being—a way of seeing the world that was forged through decades of walking its streets, loving within its spaces, and finding her voice amid its energy. The book stands as both testament and invitation: an invitation to readers to map their own cities, their own loves, their own transformations.

The conversation at the reading club ultimately circled back to its opening premise: that books belong to their readers. In sharing her personal cartography, Ibarz doesn't claim definitive truth but offers a map for others to navigate their own territories. The memoir becomes a shared space where individual memories intersect with collective experience.

What remains most striking is the reciprocity between writer and place, between author and audience. Just as Barcelona gave Ibarz the strength to write, her writing gives readers the strength to examine their own relationships with the cities and people that have shaped them. The dialogue continues beyond the page, in the spaces where memory meets imagination.

In the end, Una noia a la ciutat stands as a reminder that our stories are never truly our own—they are conversations between where we came from, where we are, and where we might go next.