Sant Jordi kicks off in Barcelona a day early with the traditional literary festival that La Vanguardia celebrates every year —for 13 years now— at the Alma hotel. Famous writers and personalities from the editorial, political, and business spheres attend today the preamble to the diada to warm up for tomorrow’s day, when many of the invited authors will be signing in the city’s streets.

Timothy Garton Ash (London, 1955) has documented live the European history of the last four decades from his dual role as historian and journalist. Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford, he has outlined in his books a history of the European present that he has compiled in books such as Freedom of Speech, Facts Are Subversive, or his own History of the Present, all published by Tusquets. A representative of the old enlightened liberalism, he studied Modern History at Oxford, where he became interested in the German resistance to Hitler, which led him to live in Berlin and to gain an in-depth knowledge of the countries of the former Eastern Europe. Precisely in his book The Magic Lantern (Taurus) he narrates the moment when Eastern Europe on the other side of the Berlin Wall begins to falter, a moment he experiences firsthand, including the first free elections in Poland.