Mercedes Barcha

Mercedes Raquel Barcha Pardo (November 6, 1932 – August 15, 2020) was the wife of novelist Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014).

Life Barcha was born on November 6, 1932, in Magangué, Colombia, to a Egyptian father of Syrian origins who ran pharmacies and grocery stores and a Colombian mother (Raquel Pardo) a Homemaker. Barcha is best known for her financial and emotional support of her Nobel Prize-winning husband, the author Gabriel García Márquez. She famously pawned her hair dryer to raise the postage needed to mail the draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude to the publisher.

She went by the nickname "La Gaba", a feminine version of her husband's nickname "Gabo". They finally married in Barranquilla on March 21, 1958, when he was 31 and she was 25. At the end of The Fragrance of Guava, when García Márquez was asked who was the most interesting person he had ever met, he answered "my wife".

Death Barcha died in Mexico City on August 15, 2020.