The claustrophobia of Rosa Ribas and other stories from the authors of EL PERIÓDICO in Sant Jordi 2022

-Response by Rosa Ribas: I love the idea. Just a question: Can you climb stairs to the roof terrace? I don’t take elevators.

‘Tilt’. This… Yes, you can, Rosa, but there are five floors.

On Thursday, April 21 at 11 in the morning, the weather was terrifying in Barcelona (in L’Hospitalet, in fact), rainy and cold, so the photograph could not be taken on the roof and the author of ‘Lejos’, the novelty of Ribas in Sant Jordi, saved herself from going up five floors.

But not a bad trance: entering through a revolving door, a mechanism that, as we all know, has a tendency to get stuck every few minutes, even for a moment. That eventual moment is for Ribas, claustrophobic proa nightmare.

“I climb ten floors like a queen. Claustrophobia keeps me fit“said Ribas. In Frankfurt, where he lived for three decades, the Spanish consulate was on a 21st floor. And he had to go from time to time. Rosa Ribas, writer and mountaineer.

That it rains in Barcelona is not like that it rains in Galicia. That it rains in Barcelona means traffic jams and breakdowns in Rodalies, almost as sure as night follows day. Juan Tallón, from Ourense and brand-new author of ‘Obra maestro’, a powerful title for Sant Jordi, was a victim of the former. “Here you don’t know how to manage the frustration generated by the rain”, he made us Mediterranean people look ugly. “The only thing that worries me about the rain is that it frizzes my hair,” he added.

Laura Fernández was a victim of the second and a rebound of the first. With how easy a Montgat-Bellvitge train journey seemed. But the railway line was down for hours and he had to team up with his partner to come by car. Against RENFE and traffic jams, there has never been anyone or what to stop it, Fernández was there, author who has taken a quantum leap with ‘Mrs. Potter is not exactly Santa Claus’. If before he sold at most a thousand copies of his perverse fantasies in closed worlds, with this one he goes for 10,000 and the fifth edition is… 10,000! “What scares me is that queues will form, because I make long dedications and are preceded by a small interrogation,” said Fernández, delighted to have finally found her readers. She finished looking at the shrews waiting to sign a copy.

In addition to Ribas, Tallón and Fernández, Olga Merino (‘Five winters’), Marta Buchaca (‘Sis mesos d’hivern’), Josep Maria Fonalleras (‘Un cafè a Roma’ and ‘Xavier Folch, editor i politic’), Emma Riverola, Miqui Otero, Jenn Díaz (‘Els possessius’ / ‘The possessives’), Roger Pascual (‘The great leap’), Andreu Claret (‘1939. The fall of Barcelona’) , Natàlia Cerezo (‘I van passar tants anys’ / ‘And so many years passed’), Pau Arenós (‘Saint Elvis, pray for us’) and Julio Carbó (the photo book ‘2’, together with Joan Guerrero).

And they could not attend for one reason or another (mainly the distance) Juan José Millás, Care Santos, Salvador Macip, Manel Esteller, Ana Bernal-Triviño, Adela Muñoz Páez, Juan Cruz, Javier García Rodríguez… all of them with a new book or after Sant Jordi 2021.

Perhaps you have noticed that Miqui Otero and Emma Riverola they are not followed by a parenthesis with the title of his new book for Sant Jordi.

It’s because they don’t have it. But his presence in the photograph is more than justified. Miqui Otero will sign for the second consecutive year copies of ‘Simón’, independent bombshell from Blackie Books that goes for 30,000 copies sold and that it already has or will soon have translations into French (Editorial Actes Sud), Italian (Mondadori), German (Klett-Cotta) and Portuguese (Dom Quixote). Little joke with foreign publishers who have bought the rights to ‘Simón’, the best of each country.

As for Riverola: if in the photograph he is with his hands in his pockets instead of raising a book, it is because the edition of ‘#PuertasAbiertas’, his first dramatic text. The play will be performed in New York from May 6 to 8 after having triumphed in Madrid and Barcelona.

More theater: Martha Buchaca he managed to skip the rehearsals of ‘Rita’ at La Villaroel. He wrote it, directs it and produces it. As he also does with ‘Quant temps em que?’, which will premiere at the Grec.

Finally, on the far right of the photograph, so far left really, and those are the good guys, like a bit of an outcast despite being very sociable, he’s the editor of the Sports section of EL PERIÓDICO Roger Pascual, which has marked a powerful biography of Gervasio Deferr. It all started with a report for the newspaper. So good that the gymnast wanted Pascual to tell the story of his journey through the wild side of life. Despite the fact that offers of feathers rained down on him at his service.