Why Was Manuel Vázquez Montalbán Sceptical About the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games?

Abstract: The Catalan Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (1939–2003) excelled in the so-called Spanish noir crime literature (Novela Negra), giving a broader account of the socio-political, historical and cultural context of the last 30 years of the 20th century. The method of our research is based on the co-examination of the literary and the historical notion of a text. The books that are mainly studied here refer to the process of transforming Barcelona from a meager harbor to a touristic metropolis in anticipation of the 1992 Olympic Games. The writer’s most famous literary character in these novels, detective Pepe Carvalho, would later be portrayed in films, TV series and comic strips as well. The aim of this paper is to find out: a) if this critical attitude of Montalbán concerns the Games and their content b) if it is related to the personal “ghosts” of the author c) if his dissatisfaction points out the inadequacy of those who can be considered responsible for the changes through the first decades of parliamentary democracy in Spain; those people who took advantage of the Olympic Games for their own benefit and not in order to combat social poverty.

Key words: Montalbán, Barcelona, Olympic Games, Spanish literature