Los castellanos

“Childhood is a fiction.” With this declaration of intent, Jordi Puntí places us at the epicenter of industrial Catalonia in the 1970s, where the rhythm of the three factory shifts and the Monday market in the town square defined the map of daily life. In the vacant lots on the outskirts, on streets still unpaved, apartment blocks were built for families who had arrived from different places. Of diverse origins, they were known to the locals as “els castellans” (Castilians) because of the language they spoke. A permanent rivalry arose between the children of these families, a state of war fueled by the silent complicity of their parents. Like a street game where cowboys and Indians throw stones at each other in empty lots, Puntí traces the geography of inherited prejudices and the fear of difference. With elegant and lively prose, which evokes the smell of pipes and the echo of the million-dollar machine in the bar, the author turns the mirror of his sentimental education to extract an essential truth: each side is nothing more than a reflection of the other.