If the publishers’ and booksellers’ guilds have spent the night making the anti-rain dance, It has only worked until past noon. The showers announced in Barcelona by the weather forecast have begun to fall around 1:00 p.m. and in what way, even in the form of hail. The most reliable models indicate that brief storms could continue until mid-afternoon. Unstable weather like nitroglycerin, definitely.
All in all, the first ‘normal’ Sant Jordi since the coronavirus pandemic began more than two years ago is a hit on the Rambla and in the bookish ‘superilla’ that has Passeig de Gràcia and Rambla de Catalunya as its axes between Diagonal and Gran Vía: almost impossible to get close to the bookstalls and in some sections there is a collapse of pedestrians.
A Sant Jordi like before, come on, before the viral curse, with the streets flooded with people, although suddenly and for a moment they have become flooded with water. The longest lines of fans are to garner blockbuster signatures like Santiago Posteguillo, Julià Navarro or ‘the Carmen Mola’ and of ‘media’ like Karlos Arguiñano. But also from ‘youtubers’ like Plex, with kids perched on lampposts and yelling at him to get his attention and a line that stretched more than a block.
Considerable also the queue before the television author of ‘Crims’, Carles Portawho signs standing, outside the booth, to break, he says, the distance and approach the readers.
human flood
Although books have been banished this time from the Rambla -not completely: some stalls of associations, neighborhood platforms and unions of the revolutionary left remain, with their unlikely titles-, the popular Barcelona boulevard has once again welcomed, on the sunny stretch of the morning, to a human flood, in a picture not seen since pre-pandemic days. The crowd moved slowly, turned into a parade of runny noses and watery eyes from the pollen of the banana trees, particularly stubborn this year, as if nervously waiting for the storm to come.
against commercialization
The ‘dyad’ began in the Catalan capital with the traditional lunch with authors organized by the Barcelona City Council, which this time had a more official character as it was held in the Saló de Cent of the ‘Casa Gran’, under cover, in anticipation of the threatening rain.
The mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, received authors -among them Olga Merino, Laura Fernández and Juan Tallón, forms of EL PERIÓDICO- and politicians led by the Vice President of the Government, Yolanda Diazand the Minister of Universities, Joan Subirats.
The act was once again a defense of the book by Imma Monsó, who on this occasion, and unlike Friday’s opening speech, launched into a passionate praise of literature: “I want subtle literature without fanfare,” she said, beginning a litany of wishes -, that includes an adult literature -even that directed at children-, virgin of censorship, resistant through the years and that resists being interpreted in a political key, that does not seek to do pedagogy -although it does- and that is uncomfortable too.”
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Monsó was aware that his claim seemed anti-commercial and anti-Sant Jordi, but he said that he only conceives “a literature capable of creating readers and not counting readers.”
Debutante
Vice President Díaz, for whom this is her first Sant Jordi, was very satisfied. “I am impressed and happy before a party that takes over the streets of Barcelona and puts at its center literature and thought that transforms life and people. So let’s continue working for a multilingual and multicultural country in many parties and many meetings like the ones today we have in Sant Jordi”, he said before some journalists much more interested in asking him about the punctures of Pegasus and the ‘Catalangate’.