Placeta del Roser, Sarrià

When I was young and I lived in Barcelona, my perfect day would have been very different than what a perfect day in the city is for me today. At the time, you couldn’t get me out of Las Ramblas, el Raval, el Barri Gótic and El Born. I had spent my childhood and teen years between Tibidabo and Sarrià. As soon as I started Uni and I discovered the old city I fell in love with it. I moved there, living in various areas, all below Plaza Catalunya. That was the time when the Francoist dictatorship had just ended, and the streets were popping with newly liberated youth going crazy with hedonism and experimentation after having grown up repressed religiously, linguistically, politically, and sexually. Read the rest of this article…

There’s nothing quite like reading a memoir that details a place you are living, but not the time. Even more so I think, if you are a foreigner in that place. A place that you now know well, but that you didn’t grow up in. It opens up a world you know, but from a very different perspective and time. And this memoir from Catalan-born Isidra Mencos is just that. It is an absolute joy!

“A lush memoir and richly detailed exploration of a pivotal time in Spain.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Promenade of Desire is many things at once: a page-turning coming-of-age tale, a gutsy examination of family, a vivid portrait of a vanished time and a place, and a profound meditation on the nature of desire. Mencos is a sure-handed, open-hearted storyteller whose yearnings reflect our own.” — Aaron Shulman, author of The Age of Disenchantments: The Epic Story of Spain’s Most Notorious Literary Family and the Long Shadow of the Spanish Civil War.

“Promenade of Desire sets the author’s sexual coming-of-age story against Spain’s sexual and political awakening in a unique and intriguing pairing.” — Julia Scheeres, NY Times bestselling author of Jesus Land

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