Sant Jordi is a large public square, where philosophy should be, in the agora, where Socrates began it, with a hopeful message for people. And that’s why I’m grateful that after having won the Josep Pla award –with Anatomia de
“We are not the best in the world,” a green-eyed woman told me at the last minute, while I was signing her book. It’s my first Sant Jordi and tiredness is already falling on me, languidly, like rain, the weight of the dragon crushing my shoulders and eyes. I have lifted the
Comics do not take center stage at Sant Jordi, but there are places where they do set the pace. At Arc de Triomf, among the stalls that stretch towards Passeig de Lluís Companys and the beginning of Passeig de Sant Joan, one of those spaces is concentrated where the type of books and the profile of the public draw a different scene within the traditional April 23rd celebration in Barcelona.
The instructions to get a copy signed by Nobel laureate Han Kang were clear: she was only going to do one signing session, at La Central del Raval, and would sign one hundred copies, one per reader. The monumental queue that formed on Tuesday at the CCCB, where the author held a Sant Jordi Dialogue, foreshadowed that it would not be easy.
They started as favorites on the starting grid and the predictions came true. Eduardo Mendoza and Regina Rodríguez Sirvent were yesterday’s best-selling fiction authors, in Spanish and Catalan, for Sant Jordi. That Crispetes de matinada (La Campana / Suma) would receive this recognition was known by publishers and booksellers, who saw the piles of books by the Puigcerdà author disappearing by the moment. In Mendoza’s case and La intriga del funeral inconveniente (Seix Barral), some had their doubts after the writer made some statements that caused some controversy, in which he recommended calling this day Book Day instead of Sant Jordi, because “Sant Jordi was an animal abuser and probably couldn’t read”. Statements that he quickly said were a joke and that he was sorry if they had been taken badly. So much so, that on the lapel of his jacket he wore a dragon with a rose, as a nod.
On Sant Jordi, anecdotes emerge naturally. “I don’t know what to tell, nothing special has happened,” many authors say when approached by cameras, microphones, and recorders. But you don’t have to dig too deep to realize that things do happen, yes. And many. For example, Albert Sánchez Piñol signed books for the first time on April 23rd, as incredible as it may seem. And despite being a bestseller, it wasn’t until the publication of his latest novel, Després del naufragi (Univers), that he dared to face this marathon day. And while this is an exciting day, it must be said that it’s not always easy to cope with the crowds.
Eduardo Mendoza has been signing books at Sant Jordi for over half a century (he published his first novel, The Truth About the Savolta Case, in 1975), but never until today had he had to do so accompanied by a bodyguard. An ironic comment about the May 23rd celebration (one must say Book Day, he came to say, because the figure of the saint “has nothing to do with books or writers, Sant Jordi was an animal abuser and probably couldn’t read”) ignited the flame of indignation in pro-independence sectors, with the Joventut Nacionalista de Catalunya (Junts’ youth wing) announcing a campaign for the Generalitat to withdraw his Creu de Sant Jordi, and from the anonymity of social media, there was even a call to burn the author’s books, taking advantage of the Sant Joan bonfires.
“Ah, right. Since La Rambla is under construction, they’ve set up the stalls here,” says a pedestrian from the corner of Portal de l’Àngel, before starting to immerse herself in a crowd that fills every corner and browses all the books. Really, there’s a crowd for everything.”
“We are no longer fed crumbs/we want the whole bread” are some verses from the song Tot explota pel cap o per la pota from the album A Alcoi (1974), by Ovidi Montllor, which has become an anti-capitalist anthem. They mean that simple people, the humiliated and offended of
Every now and then, La mort i la primavera resurfaces with force, like a hibernating animal. Rodoreda wrote it between 1961 and 1963, and let it sleep. Apparently, she resumed it between 1981 and 1983. Although there is no solid evidence of the latter, I personally deduce from her