The Spanish literature of New York City

“The city disconcerts me enormously. It shifts from an enormous lyricism of raw material to a harshness of raw material. I don’t know why I think of the combustion engine. You know, that engine works thanks to a chain of small successive bursts… a string of explosions. Well, that’s how New York seems to me: it chugs along with bursts, with shocks. Violence, everything is violent. And of course, alongside violence, its indispensable opposite: tranquility, stillness,” wrote the poet Pedro Salinas to his wife, Margarita Bonmatí, in a letter dated September 13, 1936. He had just arrived in the city, almost two months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

“My impression is confirmed, Marg. New York is [uncivilized] and violent… does everything have to mean something? What does New York mean?” The question posed by the professor — who spent the rest of his life in exile — remains relevant in the millions of texts that the city inspires and has inspired. It seems that writing about the five boroughs that stretch between the banks of the Hudson and the East River is almost a reflex for any author who walks its streets.

In every bookstore in the city, there’s a large section dedicated to New York itself. This affirms that the city’s literary popularity is overwhelming. There’s a legend and myth that surrounds the metropolis: all at once, it’s photogenic, egocentric, neurotic, absorbing, ambitious, rabidly vital, dense… and contradictory.

Faced with this vast panorama of books, the traces of Spanish literature in the American city might seem scattered and lost. But the list of Spaniards who have written about New York, however, is very long. It would approach the thickness of old telephone directories if the circle were expanded to include all those who have written about the city in Spanish. After all, New York is the nerve center of Latin culture.

A major poetic and literary revolution was forged in Manhattan at the beginning of the 20th century. In a study titled Historia poética de Nueva York en la España contemporánea (2012) – translated as “The Poetic History of New York in Contemporary Spain” – Julio Neira traces the verses that the city has inspired. He highlights “the long list of excellent books, [collections] of poems and individual poems” set in New York in the last century, which portray “the intense life experience” of that city.

In Diary of a Newlywed Poet (1916), the poet from southern Spain Juan Ramón Jiménez opened this new and decisive chapter in Spanish literature: “I am now at the center, where what comes and what goes unite the disillusionments of arrival and departure. New York, marvelous New York! [In] your presence, I forget everything!” He arrived in the U.S. by boat from Cádiz, beginning the book on his long journey. The family of his fiancée — Zenobia Camprubí — lived in New York, where the couple married. Composed of both prose and verse, part-diary and part-poetry collection, the book interweaves genres, ideas, feelings and observations. And, if this Spaniard openly echoed the influence that Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío’s verses had on the city, his diary also left an indirect mark on the next milestone: Federico García Lorca’s iconic Poet in New York (1940).

During his 1929 stay in Manhattan — the epitome of the modern, capitalist city — the native of Granada discovered Harlem, talking pictures and skyscrapers. And, in the city that he described to his family in letters, he witnessed the enormous Wall Street crash on the sidewalks surrounding the stock market. The breath and screams contained in this surrealist collection of poems have reverberated ever since, maintaining their power. Literary scholar Andrés Soria Olmedo points out that Lorca’s work also captivated the Anglo-American world, particularly given his “anxiety of influence,” defined by Harold Bloom as “the immense anxieties of indebtedness” that a poet feels toward his predecessors.

Exile brought the poet’s family and many of his friends to New York. Collections of letters – such as Poco a poco os hablaré de todo: historia del exilio en Nueva York de la familia de los Ríos, Giner, Urruti, 1936-1953 (translated as “Little by Little, I Will Tell You About Everything: A History of Exile in New York”) – and biographies – such as Lo Que En Nosotros Vive (“What Lives Within Us”) by Manuel Fernández Montesinos and Recuerdos Míos (“My Memories”) by Isabel García Lorca – capture this story. The New York of exile appears in three volumes of letters by Zenobia Camprubí and in Pasatiempo (“Passing Time”) by the artist Luis Quintanilla. And the recently-published Excomunistas: De la Revolución a la Guerra Fría Cultural (“Excommunists: From the Revolution to the Cultural Cold War,” by Alberto Sabio Alcutén) – about Joaquín Maurín (1896-1973) – reconstructs the life of the man who was a member of various Marxist parties. Maurín set up a press agency in New York the American Literary Agency (ALA), alongside fellow exile Ramón J. Sender.

Before his exile and the Civil War, the librarian José Moreno Villa wrote two memoirs recounting his romance with a New Yorker and his trip to that city. Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén and Luis Cernuda all wrote about New York in letters and verse. The city is inscribed on the map of the exiled Spanish diaspora. And, in a later poetic generation – that of the 1950s – José Hierro burst onto the scene with New York Notebook (1998), a work based on his trips to the city, as well as his stays at the home of poet Dionisio Cañas and literary critic José Olivio Jiménez.

Beyond the rich, poetic vein, another great genre for Spanish authors of the last century related to New York is travel literature in the broadest sense of the term. In a variety of works written between the early 1930s and the late 1980s – such as the La ciudad automática (“The Automatic City”), by Julio Camba; Fin de semana en Nueva York (“Weekend in New York”), by Josep Pla; Nueva York (“New York”), by Eduardo Mendoza; Historias de Nueva York (“New York Stories”), by Enric González; Diccionario de Nueva York (“New York Dictionary”), by Alfonso Armada; New York, New York, by Javier Reverte; or Ventanas de Manhattan (“Manhattan Windows:), by Antonio Muñoz Molina – the perceptions and the history of the frenetic city are portrayed. New York’s promise dazzles its inhabitants while tearing them apart.

The story keeps changing. “The image conveyed of New York by Julio Camba or the socialist Luis Araquistáin is resoundingly negative… but in general, Spanish society, [the] urban and modern [strata of] Spain, is fascinated [with the city],” notes Juan Francisco Fuentes, the author of Bienvenido Mister Chaplin (2024). Translated as “Welcome Mr. Chaplin,” his book is a study of the American influence on interwar Spain. “This suggests that the imagery of New York was created by images, films and photographs, not texts. Skyscrapers, cars, hustle and bustle… it was like a glimpse into the future.”

“It’s a place you know and yet never fully know,” reflects José María Conget, during a phone interview with EL PAÍS. Several of his books feature the skyscraper-filled metropolis that he discovered when he arrived in 1970s New York. “Everything was there: the novels and films, the poems, Latin America, exile… what couldn’t you find?” When he first began writing about New York, he decided to write about his immediate surroundings. One street corner gave him a story title – Fifty-Third and Eighth – where he captures an ordinary day in 1993, using brief glimpses of the people he observed. “More than splendor, there’s a lot of grime there,” he jokes.

Lugares que no quiero compartir con nadie (2011) and Noches sin dormir (2015) – translated respectively as “Places I Don’t Want to Share with Anyone” and “Sleepless Nights” – are the two books in which Elvira Lindo recounts her 10 years in New York: “When I wrote the first one, I was just starting to live there. [It] was my perspective as a newcomer, [tinged] with humor and intuition. The second is the farewell of someone who knows they’re going to leave, but is already settled [and] has a daily routine.” On those streets – “perfect for storytelling and full of expectations of achieving a better life” – she encountered the clichés that “we’ve accepted as being part of the city, even though you know there are other [realities].” These other aspects are explored in a contemporary work of nonfiction titled Más Allá Del Bien Y Del Mal: Experiencias De Una Psicóloga Forense (2019) – translated as “Beyond Good and Evil: Experiences of a Forensic Psychologist” – where Virginia Barber Rioja discusses Rikers Island prison and the forensic psychiatry unit at Bellevue Hospital.

And in fiction? Well, Cromos – originally written in English in the 1940s and republished in 1991 – explores the history of Spanish immigration to New York. The author himself – Felipe Alfau – immigrated to the Big Apple as a teenager and wrote most of his works in English. This topic is also addressed by María Dueñas in her bestseller, Las hijas del Capitán (2018), “The Captain’s Daughters.”

In his novel A prueba de fuego (2021) – “Fireproof” – Javier Moro revived the figure of Rafael Guastavino, a Valencian construction foreman and builder. The real-life character triumphed in New York at the beginning of the 20th century by exporting the brick vaults that still support iconic places, such as Grand Central Station. Jordi Puntí – in his novel Confeti (2025), about the musician Xavier Cugat – also recreates a specific cultural period in New York.

Even closer in time is the city described in the autobiographical Matar el nervio (2023) – translated as “Kill the Nerve” – by Anna Pazos. Or the scene in which Enrique Vila Matas’s alter ego is at Paul Auster’s Brooklyn house in Dublinesca (2010). He also set his story about the search for a painting by Edward Hopper at The Roger Smith Hotel in New York.

Benjamín G. Rosado’s 2025 Biblioteca Breve Prize-winning novel – El vuelo del hombre (“The Flight of Man”) – is also a nod to Auster, featuring New York in one of its sections. This award-winning Spanish fiction genre also includes Eduardo Lago’s Llámame Brooklyn (2006) – “Call me Brooklyn” – which won the Nadal Prize, or Bilbao-New York-Bilbao (2008), in which Kirmen Uribe reconstructed a family story on a transatlantic flight, earning himself the 2009 National Literature Prize for Narrative.

Marina Perezagua – winner of the Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz Prize – also set her novel Don Quijote de Manhattan (2017) in the city, where she began her teaching and literary career. And this year, an iconic amusement park in Coney Island lends its name to her new collection of stories: Luna Park (2025). “It’s been 25 years since I arrived and the city has changed a lot. It’s a stimulating place for writing: it has those big contrasts, which have now exploded. The epic nature of the city, the struggle and dreams of the immigrant… the solidarity, the madness in the streets, that non-stop action. It’s captivating,” Perezagua gushes.

Two Spanish-language classics about New York have also been reissued. This year would have been the 100th birthday of Carmen Martín Gaite (1925-2000), the author of the famous Caperucita en Manhattan (1990) – “Little Red Riding Hood in Manhattan” – which brought that island (with a “spinach pie” at its center) closer to several generations of children. Her book Visión de Nueva York (2005) – translated as “Vision of New York” – is a beautiful book of collages that the writer put together in the 1980s. It was published posthumously and has since been revived.

Also back in bookstores in the Spanish-speaking world is El hombre que inventó Manhattan (2004) – “The Man Who Invented Manhattan” – a collection of stories that Ray Loriga released 20 years ago. “New York is a place like any other, but one where many people have been and everyone thinks they know it: [it’s an] extremely difficult and tempting [place]. How can you talk about anyone’s life there and find an angle?” he asks.

Loriga says that he got started when the janitor in charge of the building where the author lived was found dead in the basement. He had hung himself with his suspenders. “I thought [that maybe] New York didn’t give him what he was looking for, because it never gives you what you’re looking for,” he muses.

The city never sleeps; it continues to be narrated and fabricated. Because, as the poet Dionisio Cañas writes, “New York is a magnet, a center of gravity, that attracts all those who believe that – just by being attached to it – their lives and works will acquire a special, different aura. But New York is also a relentless crusher.” Therein lies the city’s literary heart. The one Lorca sang of in his verses: “New York of wire and death / What angel lies hidden in your cheek?”

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