From medieval Barcelona to the post-Olympic period, a wide range of written views, which have given the Catalan capital a strong literary character, open up. Bernat Metge and Juan Boscán wrote in its Gothic shadow. Miguel de Cervantes chose it as the only urban stage for his immortal Don Quijote. Jacint Verdaguer and Joan M aragall made it poetic. Narcís Oller and Josep Maria de Sagarra centred their great novels in it, portraying the splendour of its middle class and the decadence of its aristocracy. For George Orwell and Simone Weil, it was an unforgettable revolutionary landscape, and for Mercè Rodoreda - or for Carmen Laforet - it was the living space for figures destined to become archetypes. Baron Maldà and Josep Pla painstakingly documented its daily life. Jean Genet and Pieyre de Mandiargues sought out its dark side; Salvat-Papasseit and Jaime Gil de Biedma made it the setting for their lyrical autobiographies. In recent years, Barcelona has been a noir criminal city in Vázquez Montalbáns Carvalho cycle, while Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Marsé, Quim Monzó and Carlos Ruiz Zafón have continued to raise it to the status of undying literary legend. A cross between a travel book and cultural journalism, Walks through literary Barcelona offers a literary and visual journey through the landscapes of these and many other writers, and, with one route after another, confronts us with the uncertainty over which is more real: the city we experience or the one we imagine, and whether the former would be the same had the latter not existed
