Roger Bastida has been named the winner of the fourth edition of the Premi Santa Eulàlia de Novel·la de Barcelona. His ambitious work, Passeig de Gràcia. Història d’una família, secured the prestigious award. Consequently, the author receives a prize of €25,000 from conveners Comanegra and Àfora Focus Edicions.
The jury, comprising Francesco Ardolino, Alba Cayón, Jordi González, Enric H. March, and Laura Tejada, praised the novel’s narrative ambition. They highlighted the author’s “audacity” in selecting such a thoroughly studied and emblematic area of Barcelona as the setting. Moreover, they noted that Bastida succeeded in producing a work of “great narrative vigour that is also historiographically valuable”.
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The splendours and miseries of the boulevard
Despite its subtitle, Història d’una família, the novel weaves together the lives of three distinct families over more than 200 years. All are connected by the famous avenue. Bastida portrays the social stratification of the street by intertwining a noble family, a bourgeois clan, and a working-class family from the domestic service sector.
While the narrative stretches across two centuries, the core of the story is concentrated between 1854 and 1952. This period begins with the demolition of Barcelona’s medieval walls and ends with post-war rationing. An epilogue brings the thematic focus sharply into the present day, addressing the current housing crisis.
“I have tried to take Passeig de Gràcia out of the current architecture and luxury postcard,” Bastida explained during the award presentation. “Just 50 years ago people lived on Passeig de Gràcia. Now maybe someone lives there. The ecosystem of the ‘cases bones’ (good houses) had two sides, the rich and the proletarian. That is why Passeig de Gràcia portrays the splendours and miseries of the street.”
A focus on material history
Born in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat in 1990, Bastida brings specific professional expertise to his fiction. He works in the audiovisual sector as a historical advisor for major series such as La templanza and Sira. This background informs his attention to the minute details of daily life, such as the format of a telegram, the scents of period colognes, or the specifics of fashion.
“I like to put the magnifying glass on seemingly minor details, but which explain society,” he noted. He added that rigorous documentation is merely the “first and elementary step” of historical fiction. However, he stressed that the narrative voice aims to be contemporary rather than archaic.
A literary ‘trencadís’
Fèlix Riera, director of Àfora Focus Edicions, described the winning novel as possessing the materiality of a “trencadís”. This term refers to the broken tile mosaics famous in Catalan modernism. He suggested the novel links apparently unrelated stories and genres into a cohesive whole. Therefore, readers would feel immersed in a tableau vivant of the avenue’s different eras.
Bastida acknowledged literary influences from Catalan classics. He admitted a weakness for Vida privada by Josep Maria de Sagarra and Mirall trencat by Mercè Rodoreda. “Surely something from those books has slipped into Passeig de Gràcia,” he said.
The Premi Santa Eulàlia has quickly established itself as a significant fixture in the literary calendar. Alba Cayón, general director of Comanegra, pointed to the success of the 2024 winner, Veus de mort als Encants Vells by Sylvia Lagarda-Mata, which is already in its fifth edition.
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