The storm behaved like any storm and passed. She left behind treeless awnings and booksellers who continue to count the lost copies, but also, the legacy of a reflection: the one that many people in the sector do about this macro day of the book as vulnerable as the giant that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of. The one with the feet of clay. This time, the giant resisted because the rain, the hail and the wind were merciless but temporary, and together with the photos of the soaked books, the newspaper library will be able to show the most usual rows, of avid consumers of letters, of complacent rubricants, of radiant sun depending on which part of the day. What if it had rained all day? What if it had blown all day? The climate is a crazy guy, he is armed and does not listen to reason. There are many booksellers who sell one out of every three books they sell each year on Sant Jordi’s day. There are reasons to reflect.
“Of course we have to rethink the model, we can’t risk everything on one day, be it Sant Jordi, July 23 or whatever,” says Carlota Freixenet, from La Carbonera.
First things first, the concentrate. Complaints have been heard again after the hailstorm from some booksellers who consider it crazy to put all the eggs in the same basket, that of Sant Jordi. They are those who say that sales are concentrated on two specific holidays, Christmas and Book Day, and that the rest of the year bookstores are a kind of wasteland where you can hear the wind whistling. Of course, the wind whistles more in the small ones. “Of course we have to rethink the model, we cannot risk everything on one day, be it Sant Jordi, July 23 or whatever&rdquor ;, he says Carlota Freixenet, from the La Carbonera bookstore. At the Poble Sec venue, the experience of 2021 is a model, when the pandemic restrictions forced activities to be spaced out for a week. It was so good that they have done it again this year. “It worked very well for us and that is why we repeated. It has many advantages, sales are distributed, there are no crowds and the readers can relate to the authors in another way”.
“What we believe and try to do is that the interest in books is maintained throughout the year and not be a matter of a day & rdquor ;, explains Irene Jaume, from The Invisible City. From the cooperative and self-managed project of the Sants neighbourhood, the feeling is that Sant Jordi has ended up becoming a kind of bookstore transcript of the system, a party to sell a lot and sell fast: a marathon. “You just have to take a look at the signing schedules and see that it is crazy, authors who sign for an hour in one place and have to run to the other end of the city, and so on all day & rdquor ;. Jaume recognizes the importance of the day of Sant Jordi (“it is an important day, without a doubt”), but warns: “If we really want to feed the theme that books are there all year, we must dare to challenge the prevailing model & rdquor ;.
the brutal climb
Expand the party. take advantage of that next year April 23 falls on a Sunday to make a Sant Jordi of two days. Repeat last year’s experience and –the idea finds its way– organize a party in the summer, like two years ago. It is what is heard these days, but not everyone agrees. “Sant Jordi is good because the non-reader buys, and if you give the non-reader two days, he does not buy one day or the other & rdquor ;, she says, exhaustively, Carme Prim, of La Caixa d’Eines, the bookstore located in Aragó street in Barcelona. “If there is a brutal rise in sales, it is because non-readers join, and the reason why they join is because It is a tradition, a fixed day, April 23. It is proven that more is sold in Sant Jordi than during the 15 days that the Madrid Book Fair lasts, and that is why & rdquor ;. Don’t touch the model, says Prim.
“Sant Jordi is good because the non-reader buys, and if you give the non-reader two days, they don’t buy one day or the other”, says Carme Prim, from La Caixa d’Eines
and they think the same Montse Serrano, from + Bernat, and Ezequiel Naya, from the Latin American Lata Peinada. “I would not touch the model & rdquor ;, says the first. “I have been celebrating Sant Jordi for 44 years and because one day there is a storm, everything cannot be changed. You can’t fight the elements. Making Sant Jordi in several days, in a week, would blur it & rdquor ;. Naya emphasizes the fact that perhaps the problem, in the end, “is that people don’t read & rdquor ;, hence a storm disrupts so much, but given the possibility of a split or expansion of the party, this reflection is allowed : “The work that Sant Jordi entails for a bookstore is tremendous, and I don’t know if I would like to do more ‘santjordis’ a year, It’s not that easy.” Surely many bookstores subscribe to his words. Especially the small ones, where the wind whistles.
Let’s talk about the weather
That’s what the booksellers say, but Sant Jordi is not just a festival for booksellers. There is a Barcelona City Council that puts the city at the service of the celebration and entities –the Cambra del Llibre, the Guild of Llibreters– who participate in your organization. Should we rethink the Sant Jordi model? In the city council they do not believe that the current model is in question, but they do not close the doors to a certain flexibility. “Those of us who have lived Sant Jordi all our lives know that the 23rd is an important date,” he says. the Deputy Mayor for Culture, Jordi Martí, but everything that is a complement to that day can of course be studied & rdquor ;. Thus, in principle, Martí does not rule out the idea of a two-day Sant Jordi next year, and stresses that this year, in fact, the bookstores had permission to take the books out on the street from Friday. “And I know it sold a lot, I don’t know if it was because people went away for the weekend, but it sold a lot.” Regarding rain, wind and hail, Martí says that “parties in public spaces have these risks & rdquor ;, but he admits that the climate is changing. “We go to a world of extreme weather events and we must incorporate this element into the debate about how we do things in public space & rdquor ;.
“Everything that is a complement to the day can of course be studied & rdquor ;, says the Deputy Mayor for Culture, Jordi Martí
In any case, the deputy mayor defends, one, the appointed day: “One thing is to bet and do everything possible so that citizens come to bookstores all year round, but it is a pride for the country in general and for this city in particular to have a party like the one we have & rdquor ;. And two, the open-air party: “Sant Jordi is by definition outdoors, but also, in Barcelona you cannot do something like what they did in Girona: The tens of thousands of people who were in the Eixample on Saturday cannot be put anywhere & rdquor ;.
Sant Jordi there is only one
Patrici Tixis is editor of Planeta and president of the Cambra del Llibre. Regarding what happened on Saturday, he insists on what he already said during the meeting on Monday with the affected booksellers: that “if the weather had been good, it would have been the best Sant Jordi in history”. Tixis adds that the model is “very good” (“Although, naturally, susceptible to adjustments & rdquor;) and so that there are no doubts about it, he affirms that “Sant Jordi there is only one and it is April 23 & rdquor ;. “The possibility of extending it to other days? I don’t know, she can look at herself, but at this moment I wouldn’t know how to answer her & rdquor ;. More than extending Sant Jordi or changing the model, Tixis is committed to the implementation of serious plans to encourage reading, and remember the statistics that indicate that 36% of Spaniards do not read or are not interested in reading.
“We defend values that are very different from those that a Casa del Llibre, a Fnac or a Corte Inglés can defend,” says Irene Jaume, from La Ciutat Invisible
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“Sant Jordi there is only one and it is April 23 & rdquor ;: Does the Chamber speak on behalf of the entire book sector? Not necessarily. From La Ciutat Invisible, Irene Jaume says that “the world of books is very broad”, ergo, “it is not realistic to believe that the Cambra, where there are publishers and bookstores that are far apart in terms of practices and values, can defend the common good fairly & rdquor ;. “We, for example & rdquor ;, he adds, “we defend very different values from those that a Casa del Llibre, a Fnac or a Corte Inglés can defend. For us it’s not just selling books, it’s building community & rdquor ;. Jaume does not go so far as to challenge the ‘superilla’, on which a reasonable consensus has spread, but he does say that maybe it is not necessary that all the bookstores move to the center in Sant George. “We have to give importance to the neighborhood. People value cool proposals from the neighborhood and that you don’t take that proposal to the center of the city. A neighborhood bookstore cannot compete with a large downtown one, and in that sense we must be more realistic and reach consensus and practices that benefit us all”.
And finally: the reader, the consumer, whatever you want to call him, is not exempt from liability. In an ideal world, as Ezequiel Naya says, if people read and bought books throughout the year, lightning and thunder could fall on Sant Jordi and press pages would not be filled with the subject. “There is”, says Carlota Freixenet, “Part of the responsibility lies with the consumer. We do activities all year round, we don’t stop doing things, we are a very active bookstore. But sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”