A Spanish film production company went to Limerick in March to shoot a documentary about famous local author Kate O’Brien, right, and her links to Spain.

The company, based in Malaga in Spain, visited the city for the 15th anniversary of the weekend held in O’Brien’s honour. The crew interviewed a number of the people involved including Irish author John Banville and historian Margaret MacCurtain.

Antonio Sierra was the man responsible for organising the naming of the street after Kate O’Brien in the village of Gotarrendura in the Avila region of Spain last summer. “I have been working on the possibility to produce a Spanish documentary on Kate O’Brien as a writer and her connection with Spain. The crew are now to film in Limerick and I would hope the documentary would be released at the end of year.”

Antonio explained that the documentary makers are also to travel to England and the towns that Kate O’Brien visited in Spain, with a particular focus on the Basque Country, where the author lived for ten months in 1922 as a governess for the Arelza family.

Antonio Sierra has been appointed as an honorary member of the Kate O’Brien committee which organises the annual literary weekend in Limerick and hopes that more institutions in Spain will recognise the local author. “I am hoping that Bilbao University will organise some form of homage to Kate– possibly a weekend in her honour– and the public libraries in the south of Spain are to be stocked with her works,” said Antonio.