Enric Bou has been chair of the Hispanic Studies Department at Brown University (Providence), between 2002 and 2011, and president of the North- American Catalan Society between 2007 and 2010. Currently he is professor in the Department of Comparative Linguistic and Cultural Studies at Università Ca' Foscari in Venice. His latest book is Invention of Space. City, Travel and Literature (Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2013), published also in Catalan: La invenció de l'espai. Ciutat i viatge (Publicacions Universitat de València, 2013).

Jaume Subirana is Associate Professor at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, and he has been visiting professor at Duke University, University of British Columbia, Brown University and Università Ca' Foscari in Venice. He edited Willkommen in Katalonien. Eine literarische Entdeckungsreise (dtv, 2007), and has published Barcelona acròstic, Barcelona 365. Temps i ciutat and recently, BarcelonABC. Alfabet d'una ciutat/A City Alphabet (2013).

"Bou and Subirana offer us a great collection of articles on the city of Barcelona written in English (...) in a book with a wide approach to the subject. The city is, by definition, a complex creation and its interpretation therefore demands a plurality of views ("ways of seeing" according to John Berger). Barcelones, in the words of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, expresses this multifocal attitude to observe reality and face the object of study. (...) With the help of twenty-one top-level essayists, they have turned Barcelona into a field of study of increasing interest. The complexity of the city demanded, as we say, multiple knowledge. The look that the texts present to us is the result of an interpretative framework that the authors define in so far as they practice it." --Toni Mollà, L'Espill

"A cultural feast for both visitors and residents, the city is captured with depth and precision in The Barcelona Reader [...] Overall, the reader provides an in-depth study of Barcelona, from its crimes and graveyards, to its grand streets, to the questions of authenticity and tourism, to the showcase of the 1992 Olympic games. This is a reader that achieves its raison d'être, covering a broad range of specialities and topics for just about everyone. Ultimately, The Barcelona Reader succeeds in capturing the true essence of the city." Pádraig Collins, AIGNE