Jaume Plensa, Catalan of the Year 2021

Jaume Plensa (Barcelona, ​​1955), the most international of contemporary Catalan plastic artists, has been distinguished with the Català de l’Any 2021 award in a gala that has meant, after a long three-year hiatus, the happy recovery of the awards with which EL PERIÓDICO has been honoring the most outstanding personalities of the cultural, political, scientific and social world of the last two decades.

As he himself pointed out in his short but succulent speech of thanks, Plensa is a sculptor obsessed with the construction of spaces that encourage encounters and relationships and that are at the same time guardians of collective memoryIn such a way that it makes all the sense in the world that he has been chosen to resume the tradition of Català de l’Any and illuminate with his example and his work those nebulous paths that open after an era that has sown so many uncertainties. “Paths that are already new & rdquor ;, as the song of Goat soup which, in a kind of poetic prophecy, sounded in the first moments of the award ceremony, held at the Auditori de Barcelona.

Ceremony in keeping with the times

It was a sober and simple ceremony, as the times demand, diligently conducted by actress and presenter Cristina Brondo. Among the authorities present, the President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès; the vice president of the Government, Jordi Puigneró; the delegate of the Government in Catalonia, Teresa Cunillera; the president of the Barcelona Provincial Council, Nuria Marín; the first deputy mayor of Barcelona, ​​Jaume Collboni, and the new mayor of Badalona, ​​Rubén Guijarro. All of them, as well as the rest of the guests, were received at the beginning of the act by Javier Moll, president of Prensa Ibérica, the publishing company of EL PERIÓDICO, and by the director of the newspaper, Albert Sáez.

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The musical accompaniment, unavoidable in the galas of the Català de l’Any, has been provided by Gerard Quintana and Josep Thió, singer and guitarist of Sopa de Cabra, who, in the year of the thirtieth anniversary of the emblematic live album ‘Ben endins’ (the best-selling album in the history of rock in Catalan), have reviewed the band’s flagship songs in acoustic versions from Girona as ‘Si et quedes amb mi’ and ‘El boig de la ciutat’.

Plensa, who has received the award (a design by the late Barcelona artist Ricard Vaccaro) by Pere Aragonès and the president of Prensa Ibérica, Javier Moll, joins his name to a list that already includes Ernest Lluch, Pau Gasol , Manuela de Madre, Ferran Adrià, Joan Manuel Serrat, Joan Massagué, Neus Català, Pasqual Maragall, Vicente Ferrer, Pep Guardiola, David Miret, Joaquim Maria Puyal, Josep Sánchez de Toledo, Josefina Castellví, Lucía Caram, Òscar Camps, Oriol Mitjà and Josep Maria Pou, awarded in the previous 18 editions.