A little champagne, little brother?

We're starting the shack from the top down: Thursday, Casa Amèrica Catalunya. A tribute to Mario Vargas Llosa, who died in Lima on April 13, begins with Creole music playing on the speakers—"maybe our first love was sincere"—and concludes, as it should, with a toast to his memory. One (or several) pisco sours on the coke. Even though the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner didn't like the national spirit, an Andean researcher has estimated that there are more than a hundred mentions of the distilled spirit in his work, from piscosauer , sometimes written that way, to the one that was customary in old backrooms, "dry and upside down"; that is, in one gulp and with a bang on the counter.

The Peruvian Consul General, Luis Pablo Salamanca Castro, attended, along with a large representation from the colony, the editor Miguel Aguilar, and the top brass of the Carmen Balcells Literary Agency. It was a packed house. The audience chatted amicably while waiting for the late speakers to appear, who eventually made up for the delay by starting with a lively discussion, far removed from the usual clichés. Here are the culprits: Dunia Gras, professor of Latin American Literature at the University of Barcelona; the Peruvian writer Santiago Roncagliolo; and the journalist Xavi Ayén, head of Culture at this holy house, who, incidentally, noted the new Pope's Peruvian identity just as the white smoke had risen.

Several authors toast Vargas Llosa's memory with a pisco sour at Casa América.

There was plenty of flow among the three speakers and countless juicy anecdotes. Roncagliolo recalls the number of journalists who called him when his compatriot, after overusing him, lost his love for Isabel Preysler: "I have nothing to say about Mario Vargas Llosa's dick." He also explained to the audience what huachafería is, a Peruvianism whose translation falls roughly between "corny" and "tacky": the expression "A little champagne, brother?" would be a prime example.

Ayén tells the audience about that magical morning in October 2010 when she shared the joy of receiving the call from Stockholm announcing his Nobel Prize in Literature with the author of Conversation in the Cathedral at the latter's Manhattan apartment. The speakers are in their element, and the audience is so entertained that the hostess, Marta Nin, director of Casa Amèrica, has to make the scissors sign with her index and middle fingers because it's approaching nine o'clock at night.

Otherwise, the week has been packed with events, like an illustrated salad. The Barcelona Poetry Festival, for example, although on Tuesday afternoon I was quite disappointed in that regard: I was heading like Little Red Riding Hood to the Calders bookstore, intending to listen to a promising debate-recital ( Poetry after Auschwitz? ), only to run into, alas, the wolf with the lowered blinds. Either I got confused, or the program didn't clearly specify where the event was being held, or both. So, to make up for the void, the following morning, Wednesday, I went up to the Vallcarca neighborhood, where a neighborhood initiative has filled balconies, fences, and windows on the street of the same name with Bécquer's verses, in honor of the 155th anniversary of the poet's death.

Later that same day, as Grace Paley would say, CaixaForum brought together writer Sara Mesa, author of novels such as Un amor and the recent Oposición (Anagrama), and filmmaker Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, director of Cinco lobitos (Goya Award for Best New Director). Mesa came with her homework well done, and through the letters of the alphabet she tried to find similarities between the work of both, who, moreover, have a fondness for the same actress: Laia Costa. Some similarities: B for search (both understand the act of telling as idem), D for bewilderment (the characters face complex circumstances), E for ellipsis (they don't tell us everything, good news!), F for family (the mother of all lambs), G for rift, and so on up to Z. The series En otras palabras (In other words) continues next week at the site of the former Casaramona textile factory.