Baltasar Porcel (1937-2009) is going through a purgatory. His relationship with pujolismo has made him an uncomfortable figure. A few months ago a young Mallorcan writer declared that Porcel is one of the few authors in his class, perhaps the only one, who wrote a good novel in each decade. But his fundamental books ( Solnegre , The moon and Cala Llamp , Horses in the dark , Spring and autumn , The heart of the wild boar ) are not as widely read as you might expect. Initiatives are moving around his work, such as the exhibition that was presented at the Palau Robert and CaixaForum Palma, but something is missing.
In the image of that exhibition (a photograph by Toni Vidal), Porcel appeared with a fur coat that gave him an air of a Siberian writer, in keeping with the tremendous theme of some of his books. When I asked, they told me that it was a gift from the Tipel leather factory, owned by Lluís Prenafeta, Jordi Pujol’s right-hand man. Arranz Bravo and Bartolozzi decorated the Parets del Vallès factory in a pop style. That is Porcel: a powerful, European imaginary, a breath of a Russian novel, with his feet very well installed on the material ground. What in the nineties was the guarantee of fictions that portrayed Catalan society and its ruling classes, today has become something suspicious and a demerit.
Always ready to enter the clash, with José M.ª Gironella, Sebastià Juan Arbó, José Bergamín or Juan Marsé
In his biography of Porcel, Sergio Vila-Sanjuán (Barcelona, 1957) tells a fascinating story: how a boy born in a remote place in the Balearic Islands (Sant Elm, in Port d’Andratx) came to make his way to to be a figure of Barcelona’s action and opinion journalism, a successful novelist, and a prop of cultural companies as different, antagonistic, as magazines Destination Y Serra d’Or, the Catalanism circuit of Ermengol Passola (owner of Mobles Maldà and Concèntric records) and the Planeta publishing house.
Baltasar Porcel, Margarita Rivière and Sergio Vila-Sanjuán at an ACEC colloquium on writers and Europe, in June 2007
There is a fundamental, psychological fact, which is the opposition between father and uncle. In the fifties, the father gave up working in the fields to work in a hotel in Palma. While Uncle Macià appeared surrounded by a mythical aura: he was a smuggler. From his observations on engines, routes and cargoes, Porcel built the novel The Argonauts (1968), which the police used for a long time, due to its great realism, to train young carabineros. Porcel was an ambition: he wanted to embody in the field of letters the intrepid, free, materialistic and adventurous spirit of Uncle Macià. Much of his work exalts these values. Another part naked and ridicules the stately and hotel Mallorca.
Vila-Sanjuán, which is the benchmark for cultural journalism in Spain, reconstructs Porcel’s climb, from childhood in Port d’Andratx to the culmination represented by the novel Horses in the dark (1975), who formulated the history, customs and landscape of Andratx as a literary myth, in a familiar and universal key. He examines the tortuous relationship with his teachers (Cela, Villalonga, Pla), from whom he learned a lot and with whom he ended up in a harsh mood. It brings to light a subject hitherto taboo: the relationship with the writer Concha Alós, married to the deputy editor of a Movement newspaper, with whom he lived in a few decisive years. His insight as a good journalist led Vila-Sajuán to discover Porcel’s hand in the Planeta prize that was awarded to Alós in 1962, and from which he was disqualified for having a current contract with another publisher.
Baltasar Porcel, in the course of his field research for his reports on the Arab-Israeli conflict for Destino magazine in 1968
Porcel always appears ready to enter the clash, with José M.ª Gironella, Sebastià Juan Arbó, José Bergamín or Juan Marsé. Vila-Sanjuán highlights a key factor: the construction of the image. Porcel appears photographed by Barceló in interviews with Serra d’Or and by Toni Catany in the Middle East reports for Destination. A photo of Porcel in front of the pyramid of Gizeh symbolizes his pharaonic ascension. The day he shows up to collect the award, Josep Pla wearing a leather jacket (was it Tipel?) And a turtleneck sweater hits the mark and is talked about in the fashion and society pages.
Vila-Sanjuán says that in his in-depth interviews, Porcel showed his characters in a less statuary way, without moldings. That’s what he gets too, brilliantly, The young Porcel: introduce ourselves to Porcel redivivo, in full ascension and ambition, without plaster.
The young Porcel / The young Porcel
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