AUTHOR: Rafael Vallbona
PUBLISHER: Milenio
GENRE: Fiction
READER’S NAME: Katie Whittemore
DATE: June 14, 2020
La casa de la frontera is a novel rooted in both a particular place and family—the town of Puigcerdà in the Cerdanya region in the Eastern Pyrenees, on the French-Spanish border, and the familia Grau. Departing from the family’s present day recollections of their own stories and the history of the area, Vallbona weaves a choral novel that begins in 1882 and traces the 20th century in both the Catalan capital of Barcelona and the Cerdanya region through the eyes of one ordinary family (or extraordinary, perhaps) who lived them firsthand. The novel is a well-written blend of family lore and historical account, diving into episodes as diverse as: the growth of cosmopolitan Barcelona, anarchist agitation, the Second Republic and women’s short-lived three years with voting rights prior to the Spanish Civil War, the mass exodus of postwar refugees through Puigcerdà into France, the drug trade and European influence of the 1960s during Franco’s reign, the building of the Cadí tunnel, which inaugurated a boom in tourism in the 1980s and changed the economic reality of the mountain region forever.
Vallbona has said in interviews that the novel is “90% nonfiction[1]” that he intended to show that the periphery is also a protagonist of history. This is a laudable aim, and for this reader, the book shines in the depiction of how the people that inhabit a particular place experience what later becomes history, in the description of how a family’s sense of duty—to one’s family, one’s home, one’s land—maintains a constant presence in the physical form of the “casa de la frontera.” The building that will ultimately serve as hostel, bar, village provisioner, and ski and bike shop sees many changes throughout the 20th century, but its continued existence serves as the site around which the people and ideas populating this novel will return to again and again.
The narrative style is straightforward and realist. Vallbona frames his tale with first person accounts of his relationship to the Graus and how the seed for the book was planted in a visit he made to the family home on the border in the company of friends, where he heard the family story from the nonagenarian grandfather, Ricard, about the time representatives of the newly formed Basque government took refuge in Puigcerda and governed from exile. From there, Vallbona traces the home’s history to 1882, and then largely follows the events that shake the tiny community chronologically. Interspersed with chapters that narrate events from the close third person perspective of various members of the family are short sections serving to anchor the reader in the present—on the eve of fourth generation shop owner Carme’s retirement, when she will close the shop she has run for decades. Vallbona also includes snippets from newspaper clippings and government declarations, as well as letters from one of the Grau brothers on the war front defending Catalonia from nationalist forces.
This book would translate well—the language is clear, classic, and flows smoothly. In terms of the subject matter, the family saga and meditation on the persistence of place and memory would be attractive to readers in other languages. There are some reflections on the nature of life on the border that elevate this story to the universal and would resonate with readers internationally. That said, a principle concern is that the novel is very much steeped in the particular history of the region, and when Vallbona pulls back to get a broader view, we don’t make it much past Barcelona or the French territory on the other side of the border. And while this detailed focus on locality works really well for Catalan and many Spanish readers, the book does assume at least a glancing familiarity with 20th century Catalan and Spanish history. There are a number of passages that describe specific political and cultural forces and figures that would be totally unknown to a US audience, which could possibly be a concern for the interest in publishing this book in English. Given that it is a hybrid work of fiction and non-fiction, based on a family’s real memoirs and actual historical events, footnotes could be added to an English translation in order to round out the overall picture and provide context.
This novel won the BBVA Sant Joan Prize for Literature. Rafael Vallbona (1960) is a prolific Catalan writer and journalist. He has written more than fifty books, including poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and travel writing.
