Eduardo Mendoza: A Portrait of a City, Laughter, and a Relentless Eye on Society
Eduardo Mendoza, born in Barcelona in 1943, is widely recognized as one of the most brilliant storytellers in the Spanish language. His latest work is a novel that invites readers to laugh from the first page to the last, with a vitality that defies the gloom of its starting point.
Three Puzzles for Organization (Seix Barral) opens in a city Mendoza knows intimately. The book, like much of his oeuvre, moves through Barcelona with a blend of humor and critique, anchored in the Franco era. It draws a precise map of a metropolis that has long been the home and atmosphere of his fiction, exposing both its light and its shadow.
Throughout the conversation, Mendoza remains, in equal measure, amused by the craft and deeply attentive to the political and cultural shifts in Catalonia. He keeps a light touch in his humor, yet his observations carry a sharp edge, even as he narrates the city’s everyday life. The interview itself becomes a curious mirror—one where the writer laughs at the form while exposing something of himself in the process.
The novel unfolds across its 407 pages with a guiding voice that often turns into self-portrait. The humor is not merely decorative; it serves as a way to face serious topics, to puncture pretension, and to reveal the precarious balance between grandeur and vulnerability in a city that seems built of tin as much as of stone. The action commences on Valencia Street, near Paseo de Gracia, a block where luxury hotels meet a modest Egyptian antiquities museum. A narrow nineteenth‑century building with a gray stone facade and floral reliefs looms over a busy urban corridor and becomes the stage for the narrative that follows. This geography is more than backdrop; it is a living portrait of Barcelona itself, a city Mendoza knows from the inside out and writes with instinctual fluency. He notes, almost playfully, that he does not always know which book he has written, joking with a journalist over countless Nespresso capsules that fueled the next season of storytelling [source: Alma Hotel interview].
When pressed about the book, Mendoza acknowledges that he once considered stopping entirely. He recalls telling himself to quit writing, only to rediscover a story inside him the very next day. The result is a work that feels as if it were produced by someone else—an act of writing that happens to be his own, even as it slips away from him at moments and demands to be told anew. The journalist’s recorder falters, the editor’s faith in technology wobbles, yet Mendoza answers with a steady voice that blends candor with humor. The episode becomes part of the novel’s texture and its emotional landscape [citation].
From the outset, the book balances satire with genuine warmth. Mendoza cites influences as diverse as Azcona, Mihura, Berlanga, and the comic world of Mortadelo y Filemón, acknowledging that these voices shaped his own sensibility. He notes that Mihura, though sometimes overlooked, remains a crucial touchstone, and he confesses that his love for the rhythms of street language continues to guide his writing. It is a lineage he inherited from a previous generation of writers and humorists, and one he has preserved with a clear, affectionate honesty.
Humor as a Personal Channel
“I can’t take everything so lightly,” Mendoza says, explaining that humor functions as a way to release tension and to express what he wants to say, do, and think. His dialogue is punctuated by bold, sometimes brash statements that reflect a consciousness of the political moment without surrendering to cynicism. The dialogue folds in references to real-world events, including Catalonia’s political climate, while never losing the sense that laughter can coexist with critique.
Barcelona is not merely a setting but a presence in the novel, shaping every scene from its earliest pages to the closing lines. Mendoza describes a Barcelona that exists both in the present and as a memory of what the city has been. The Savolta Trial, a reference point in the work, becomes a vehicle to explore how the city has evolved—and how some forces remain, even as the surface changes. He refuses to romanticize the past, noting that cities change in ways that suit those who live inside them, and that nostalgia is not a reliable guide to what lies ahead.
When asked about the lasting impact of Francoism and the Organization, Mendoza offers a sober assessment. He hopes that much of the era fades, yet admits that certain patterns endure. He locates corruption not as a relic of a single period but as a persistent undercurrent, fueled by old interests and a reluctance to let go of power. The commentary extends to the broader political moment, where he laments the cacophony of rancor and spectacle and urges a broader commitment to constructive dialogue. If dialogue itself has become a casualty of modern politics, Mendoza believes literature can still offer a path to clarity and empathy.
In discussing Madrid, New York, and the wider literary landscape, Mendoza pays homage to the comedians and monologists who trained his ear for human speech. He recalls conversations with Juan Marsé and reflects on how the language of the street—its slang, its rhythms, its laconic humor—shaped his capacity to translate real people and real voices into fiction. The influence of comic traditions remains evident in his own writing, a testament to a life lived among performers, screeners, and readers who rewarded honesty and wit alike.
He also considers contemporary culture’s obsession with spectacle—from football and Eurovision to the broader consumption of “tin” culture. Mendoza argues that genuine value is often buried beneath a landscape of disposable trends, and he urges readers to resist the easy allure of quick gratification. Education, he suggests, matters more than ever when it comes to forming a critical sensibility capable of resisting the lure of minimum effort. The novel’s concerns about racism, supremacism, and the far right are treated with seriousness, yet never stripped of human warmth or a sense of shared humanity.
In closing, Mendoza keeps his stance on nostalgia measured and his faith in Barcelona’s ongoing evolution intact. The head of the Organization, he says, embodies clichés and mediocrity, much like the city itself—always changing, always in need of new voices. The author remains mindful that the present will someday be a remembered past, and that future readers will judge the city by what current generations contribute. The interview ends with a quiet acknowledgment: the laughter that runs through the pages is the author’s own, a steady thread linking the humor that shaped his early years to the reflective, sometimes critical perspective that defines his later work [attribution: interview source].
There are 407 turbulent pages, and Mendoza’s answer to whether the text is a personal confession, a social mirror, or a political ledger is simple: humor is his instrument, and it remains a generous, stubborn, essential part of who he is as a writer. He notes that his influences are numerous and that his aim has always been to tell people what they are really like, even when the truth is inconvenient to hear. As the conversation closes, it becomes clear that Mendoza’s Barcelona—its streets, its cafes, its conversations—will continue to inform his fiction, inviting readers to see the city anew through a writer who has spent a lifetime learning to listen, laugh, and speak with uncommon candor.