Do you remember when it hailed in April?

I signed at mid-morning in Plaça Reial and the wind was pregnant with promises of sales, fifth party toasts and a flurry of kisses without a mask. People were very excited that day. The fact is that during the pandemic (because you remember the pandemic, right? Yes, the first one, exactly) a lot had been said about “sortirem millors”. The fact is that we did not come out better, but many people resumed the habit of reading. During the lockdowns (remember how we used to scrub tomatoes and pasta bags with a damp cloth of bleach?) everyone turned on Netflix (Netflix, yes, man, that platform where people spent more time deciding what to put on than watching it ), but then many got tired and went back to reading.

The previous Sant Jordi had already been like the great first party after the pandemic tunnel. And the year 22 promised to end in ‘after’.

There had been much talk during the week that it might rain. But nobody really believed it, because the rain in Sant Jordi is like that friend who always says that he will come to the party but does not appear. So plans B were not sought, as is done with weddings or parties. Too much faith, sometimes.

The day dawned with the typical Tupperware sky, a gray and damp vault. But soon it seemed that it opened and that, once again, there was nothing to fear. Rafa even stopped by to give me a can of Estrella Galicia, while she was signing a book for a Galician couple. I took the opportunity to recite the text of the bottle labels, memorized at 16, when I also learned a very pedantic fragment of ‘Hopscotch’.

Many readers came and explained to me what they felt and we all pretended that it would not rain. When I put my autograph on the last copy, it started to hail. It was something strange. If it had rained frogs or locusts it would not have been more. Five minutes ago it was the heat of Eden. Suddenly it seemed like Ecclesiastes.

I went into the arcades. And then, perhaps because it hailed, at the Glacier, with Txell. It had been a little joke from that increasingly experimental screenwriter he types on high. Others said something about climate change. The fact is that, half an hour later, he hailed again. And an hour and a half later, he did it again. And then some awnings flew and the paper (paper, yes, we still use it) got wet rippling in morning waves.

There are those who still talk about the snowfall of 1962. But, do you remember that Sant Jordi?

Yes, it seems like yesterday.