As a child, on a day like this, every year at school I would paint a photocopy with Sant Jordi, Saint George in my land. Every year I would change the dragon’s color so as not to get bored. Then I would write stories for the saint, destinies, love affairs. Years later I dreamed of this Catalan festival for my writing, wishing that perhaps, if one day I wrote a novel, someone would give me a rose or, even better, a dedicated book. Sant Jordi on TV had something of that miracle of the loaves and fishes, but with books and roses.
Read more My first Sant Jordi
Today I sign books for the first time on Sant Jordi. I, who used to write in crooked notebooks and in secret, am now here, pen in hand and a smile on my face. It’s strange. It’s beautiful. And also somewhat extraordinary.
I, who used to write in crooked notebooks and in secret, am now here, pen in hand and a smile on my face
Around me, more than a million books are given as gifts. Who knows how many roses. Everyone enjoys themselves, everything seems easy, almost magical and with a wild cooperation. Even Antoni Gaudí’s house is covered in flowers as if welcoming those who arrive from all corners. But let’s not kid ourselves, this doesn’t happen on its own.
There is a precise machinery that makes this day possible. Publishers who read when no one is looking, distributors who make the impossible fit, booksellers who place each book as if they were jewels… And then there are the readers.
Readers who approach as if coming for something of their own. Readers who have saved and waited for this date to give a chosen story to someone they love. Readers who, without knowing it, sustain this. Because without them, nothing is sustained.
Read more Sant Jordi is another fan of Rosalía
And in this delirium of love for literature, no one resists. I like to imagine Han Kang trying butifarra, Zülfü Livaneli looking at our sea as if touching the waters of his own, Amélie Nothomb searching for Salvador Dalí in the Raval. Everything intersects. Everything fits. Everything can be dreamed.
I am impressed by the fragility of this gesture and how precise it has to be for it to happen. How easy it would be for something to go wrong. And yet, every year it returns. And in this way, and with this passion, only here, even though they have tried to replicate it even in Tokyo.
Sant Jordi was not about dragons or spears. It was about this. About an entire city going out into the streets to celebrate something as improbable as reading. And, incidentally, loving each other a little better.
Read more An excessive illusion
