The Latin American literary boom, with strong Catalan influences

The Latin American literary boom; capital city… Barcelona? 

That’s at least where the head office of the agent to many of the biggest names that were a part of this cultural phenomenon was located, and where many of the biggest authors moved to for significant portions of their careers. 

Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, Pablo Neruda, Carlos Fuentes, Álvaro Mutis, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Isabel Allende, and plenty more were all represented by one trailblazing Catalan agent – Carmen Balcells. 

In 60 years, the Carmen Balcells Literary Agency represented six Nobel Laureates in Literature, four of whom hailed from Latin America and forming part of the boom tradition: Miguel Ángel Asturias, Pablo Neruda, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa.

“This is known as the Latin American Boom Agency,” Maribel Luque, Literary Director at the agency nowadays, tells Catalan News, adding that Balcells “was quite an influence in this movement with all those writers.”

So how did it happen? Where did it start? Balcells worked at publishing houses Acer and Seix Barral before setting up her own agency, and in those jobs she worked on contracts in Latin America and with authors from that part of the world. 

“She always said it was kind of a coincidence,” says Laura Palomares, the granddaughter of Carmen Balcells who now works in the agency her grandmother founded. Through local writers, Balcells was connected with some others in Latin America, and with the publishing industry being centered in Barcelona at the time, “one author brought her to another, then another, and then the boom happened.” 

“That's what the legend says, that she created the boom, but I think she had the vision to get together and make literary relations between authors from very different countries, like Peru or Colombia, that before hadn't thought of themselves as one united thing, and I think she helped in that, but obviously the boom created itself,” Palomares says. 

But it was more than just coincidence. Balcells had the contacts, but she also had “a very literary nose,” Maribel Luque explains. The ‘superagent,’ as she was dubbed by Catalan writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, “went for those writers who weren't known at the time,” Luque says. “She made her bets and she won.” As Palomares puts it, “she had a brilliant intuition, which is something that can't be replicated or can't be learned.”

In addition, Balcells worked with a personal touch that helped foster the creativity and create the conditions for some of the best writers of the 20th century to produce some of their most redeemed work, so much so that García Márquez called her La Mama Grande – the Big Mama. 

“She charmed the writers,” Laura Palomares tells Catalan News. In her, “writers found someone they could trust. She was not two-faced, she was what she was, and you could see there was truth in what she was saying.”

Luque says that Balcells wanted to “professionalize” the careers of her clients. With that aim, the agent turned the publishing industry on its head, making much more money for authors by handling contracts with publishers in completely new ways. 

For the same purpose, Balcells “was ready to handle domestic issues,” for her clients, “or the children, the school for children, or whatever they needed so that they would not distract from the pure act of writing,” Luque explains. 

Balcells would find her writers apartments to live in, help them move country, and even directly give them money from her own pocket to help them survive while working on their novels – anything to create the environment for the talent to shine. 

“I think that's what made them decide to move to Barcelona, and Barcelona became what it was, the epicenter of the Latin American boom,” Palomares remarks. 

In addition, the publishing industry was already quite strong in Barcelona, and even under the Franco regime, censorship controls were loosened as long as business was good, making the country money. 

If ever the material of the writers verged into politics, it was usually about the politics of their home country, many hundreds of kilometers away, and ire was not directed at Franco’s regime, where they were permitted to live and work in relative comfort.