Jose Oliva |
Barcelona, (EFE) mysterious.
“Double or nothing” (Roca Editorial) is the first installment of the trilogy that the British author Kim Sherwood will write at the request of the heirs of Ian Fleming, who wanted to include Barcelona in the narrative journey, “an iconic setting that has an architecture and a recognizable profile, despite the fact that, paradoxically, Fleming hated modernism”, the writer explains to EFE.
In the first reference of the saga to the city of Barcelona, Bond is spoken of as someone who disappeared in the middle of summer shortly before an appointment with a Russian scientist, Mikhail Petrov, who was participating in an academic conference on the reduction of the ice layer in the Barcelona Fair.
Immediately, the reader discovers the professional relationship between Bond and two of the three new protagonists created by Sherwood, agents 003 (Johanna Harwood) and 009 (Sid Bashir).
In this Petrov follow-up operation, Bond visits one of the relics of the 1929 International Exposition, the Pueblo Español, which recreates an imaginary town based on reproductions of regional buildings of diverse architectural styles; the modern Olympic Ring and the Mies van der Rohe pavilion, the former German pavilion of the Exposition.
This surveillance action takes him to other emblematic places in the county, the Greek Theatre, the Magical Fountain of Montjuïc, the funicular and Park Güell.
The disappearance of Bond in Barcelona, who could even have been assassinated by Rattenfänger, a private military company that is putting the world order in check, occurs in a context of extreme concern in the British Intelligence Service.
They have fallen 002 in Dubai, 0010 in Basra and 005 in a mountain pass in some undetermined place, the old 009 took eleven hours to bleed to death and 0011 has been missing for more than two years.
Barcelona is not the first city “with a license to kill” in the series, since it was previously the scene of the Madrid series, “For Your Eyes Only” (1981) -fictionally, since the scenes were filmed in a Greek town – and “Quantum of Solace” (2008), and Bilbao, “The world is never enough” (1988).
If Woody Allen made an advertorial on the city in his film “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, which won Penélope Cruz an Oscar but was reviled by critics as one of his worst films, Barcelona has had stellar appearances in books, as since the 17th century in Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
More recently, in 2009, the superhero Batman wandered through a postcard-perfect Gothic Barcelona in his adventure “Dragon Knight”, in which he was forced to leave Gotham City to hunt down and capture one of his fiercest enemies, Killer Croc.
In his investigation, the Dark Knight traveled to Barcelona to find a mentally affected Killer Croc who believed to be the reincarnation of the dragon from the legend of Saint George.
The roof of La Pedrera, Casa Batlló, the National Palace and the monumental fountain of Montjuïc, the Monumental bullring, the Hospital de Sant Pau, Las Ramblas, the monument to Columbus and the Sagrada Familia were the emblematic places that appeared in the bullets.
Barcelona has also been the setting for literary works by non-Catalan authors, such as “Diario del ladrón”, by Jean Genet; “Homage to Catalonia”, by George Orwell; “Tell me who I am”, by Julia Navarro; “The crazy woman in the house”, by Benito Pérez Galdós; “Nefando”, by Monica Ojeda; “The Cartel” by Don Winslow; “The Stone of Fire” by Glenn Cooper; or the play “Lirio entre espinas” by Gregorio Martínez Sierra.
