Says Maurici Clapés, the alter ego of the journalist and producer Mateo CiuranaWhat Caldes de Malavella is not the center of the universe, but it is on the way there. Perhaps that is the reason for the discovery that frank sinatra, In the most famous horn attack of classic cinema, he crossed the village on his way to Tossa de Mar, where he Ava Gardner turned Pandora and the Wandering Dutchman and he flirted with the bullfighter Mario Cabré, he ignited the spark for his third novel. After La copa de Caldes and Bernadeta, Ciurana is now publishing with Efadós Ago to paradise A novel that combines the glamor of classic Hollywood with the world of the wild peasants, mixing reality and fiction.
Ciurana reviews the character of Clapés who has already appeared in Bernadette, a kind of alter ego with whom he shares some traits, although not entirely autobiographicaland with which he has found “a literary voice” in which he feels comfortable because it allows him to act more as a witness than a protagonist.
“He dedicates himself to local communication, does a lot of research, is divorced and after 25 years is living again in his parents’ house in Caldes. He has the theory that great stories can be told without leaving the cityand it doesn’t get lost,” assures the Diari de Girona employee.
Between fiction and reality
Ciurana repeats the outline of his previous novel and divides the book into journalistic research and a novel-like second halfin which it is not about the absolute truth and is allowed to play, imagines a stay for the actress Mogambo I The Barefoot Countess in Caldes
A false press clipping from an alleged message from DIary of Gironais the starting point ofa story that plunges into those days when Hollywood was on the Costa Brava. Clapés learns of the arrest in Tossa de Mar from the pressa woman trying to bury the ashes of a deceased in the bronze statue by Ava Gardner this evokes his passage through the city.
“The journalist needs to know why it was so important for the dead to stay connected to the movie star forever,” explains Ciurana, who has extensively documented a subject close to his heart, film Pandora“what it means that the big film industry went to Tossa in the 1950s and what it means for the beginning of tourism on the Costa Brava”.
It is this research that Mateu Ciurana documents Sinatra’s passage through Caldes. “When the international press blew up on the relationship between Gardner and Cabré, Sinatra traveled by plane to Barcelona and from there by train to Caldes, where the only one who spoke English The current mayor’s grandfather, Salvador Balliu, helps him get to the shooting in Tossa», continues the writer, also supported by the writer, journalist and collector from Palafrugell Luis Molinasa reference to filming on the Girona coast, and who eventually appeared as a minor character in the novel.
Where documentation fails, the author ofgo to paradise put fiction in imagine the actress disappearing from filming for three days to go to Caldes, to a farmhouse and experience the harvest season intensely.
“She was the daughter of a farm in Carolina, so it wouldn’t have been anything strange for her,” points out the author, who promises readers will find “a well-documented Ava, around 28 years old and still believing in men and love, that she is not the same as she emerges ten years later in Madrid in a life of alcohol, sex and flamenco».
Mateu Ciurana, who has projects in hand “to further develop the character of Maurici Clapés”, plans to present the book on Wednesday March 29 in Girona at Bookstore 22 with bookseller Guillem Terribas. On April 1st at 12 noon he will do it in the library of Caldes.
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