Portrait of Xavier Theros

Writer and poet

Using the pseudonym Xavier Theros (Barcelona, 1963), Xavier Ballesteros Marqués is a writer and poet, and the author and actor of the monologue ¡Qué bello es vivir... Bien! [How beautiful it is to live… Good!] and of the four-voice poetry show La poesía con sangre entra [Poetry: There’s No Royal Road to Learning]. 

Co-founder and member, with Rafael Metlikovez, of the duet Accidents Polipoètics, he is also the author of several humorous books, as well as the historical essay Burla, escarnio y otras diversiones [Mockery, Derision and Other Amusements] (Ed. La Tempestad, 2004). La Sisena Flota a Barcelona [The Sixth Fleet of Barcelona] earned him the 2010 Josep Maria Huertas Clavería award for journalism. In 2017, he won the Josep Pla narrative prize with the novel La fada negra [The Black Fairy], a historical thriller set in Barcelona in 1843. He is a contributor to the newspaper Ara.

Articles by Xavier Theros

The struggle surrounding street and square names in democratic Barcelona

The changes made to the names of the city’s streets and squares are a reflection of each municipal mandate. By action or omission, the names of streets and squares...

El passatge de Madoz l'any 1980, amb el bar Vivancos a l’esquerra, actualment el restaurant Les Quinze Nits. © José Antonio Sancho
The rise, fall and revival of the Plaça Reial

Few places in Barcelona have been as dynamic and as changing, as central and at the same time as hidden, as the Plaça Reial. It started out as a brothel, to later...

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