Her energy was astonishing, a living spark that filled rooms with warmth and wit. She moved through dramatic moments with a deftness that made writing feel almost born from her hands. A colleague had a winter desk set, but whenever he looked up, his eyes found a spark in her presence, and the moment would shift from frost to summer in an instant. She greeted you with a soft rebuke, a knowing smile, and a question that cut straight to the heart of the matter: what was wrong with you?
Then he would laugh, settle into the chair, turn with purpose, and issue a quick command to the room. No whiskey, no coffee, just attention. He listened closely, his hands moving with an energy that suggested he was thinking a thousand things at once. The seasons seemed to change on his face, until a summer smile finally won. So long as no one stirred trouble, it was clear that this was Carmen Balcells.
During an intimate interview in that small office, a Peruvian professor arrived for something the speaker could not quite name. The man began to scold her for pursuing an important conversation before he sat down to recount a frightened heart’s story.
They were alone until the visitor stepped back into the street. Then, as if washing his hands in Pilate’s fashion, he told the reporter that it was he who came for the interview. “Oh, let’s continue then.”
always write
Her laughter opened summers at home like a lush doorway. She dressed in light whites, simple jewelry, and told stories as if they were the plain truth. She spoke in a way that suggested a secret already understood in her own tongue. She believed she had something no one else could know. When the secret grew, and you felt you would carry it away, she shifted the scene and sent you to the kitchen to place an order. When you returned, she would ask, “And what did you come to talk to me about?”
She was born on August 9, and in those midsummer days, she seemed to keep a sunlit warmth even in storms. If a storm raged, the August light could stabilize it, and the day would feel like a gift to everyone nearby.
One winter, a friend who felt like family, Nélida Piñón, Brazil’s brightest and kindest voice, needed to return to Rio for Christmas. The roads were heavy with snow, and the journalist on the other end asked for help. The reply was a mix of humor and resolve: arrange everything, the fastest route, a helicopter if needed, and get her home before the holiday faded.
The plan unfolded with a spontaneity that sounded almost like a dare. The search led to a summer chopper that somehow rode out the winter, and the moment to act arrived. Nélida waited with a driver in the distance, and she could finally move toward safety. The conversation shifted to the environment around her, a place that felt almost like a road house where journeys began and ends blurred into Brazil.
She welcomed everyone with a sense of summer in the air, preparing opportunities for Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carme Riera, Juan Marsé, Eduardo Mendoza, and Gabriel García Márquez. Marsé celebrated his sixtieth birthday in January, and the room brightened as a hymn rose for the writer of Últimas tardes con Teresa.
the most effective
When Vargas Llosa received the Nobel Prize in winter 2010, many winters lingered in memory, for the beloved wit of Carmen’s summers was gone from Barcelona. He moved quietly, choosing absence over noise, and the world carried on with its own rhythm. In that time, the house felt permanently touched by summer, a place where questions were always met with new angles and every answer sparked another inquiry: what do you mean by that?
In the end, nothing in the world could quite capture the felt atmosphere of Carmen Balcells’s home. It felt as if August lived there all year. She left with a bundle of secrets and carried writing with her, and if an intruder could not hide his winter, the author would have left a note for everyone who entered the door. The story philosophy remained: keep moving, keep asking, keep sharing.