The Time of the Doves

Natàlia, a working-class woman known as Colometa, tells the story of her life in the Gràcia district of Barcelona, her marriage to the domineering Quimet and his obsession with doves, and the Spanish Civil War that shatters her small world. Rodoreda maps the real neighbourhood: the Plaça del Diamant where Natàlia meets Quimet at a dance, the Gràcia streets and the flat overrun by his doves, the district under the bombs and hunger of the war, and the square she returns to at the end.

Natàlia (Colometa)

Plaça del Diamant

Chapter 1

At a festa dance in the Plaça del Diamant, the young Natàlia is claimed by the forceful Quimet, who renames her Colometa, little dove, and sweeps her into a marriage that will remake and unmake her. The square, giving the book its original Catalan title, is where her whole fated story begins.

Chapter 1

explicit The novel opens at a dance in the Plaça del Diamant, the real square in the Gràcia district of Barcelona, where Natàlia meets Quimet; the square now holds a statue of Colometa.

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