Saturday July 1. Almagro, start of its classical theater festival. The book of the month changes in the window of the small Macondo bookshop, next to the main square of the town of Manx (9,000 inhabitants). It is the new novel by Irene Solà. Not at all surprising, given the author’s success, if it weren’t for the fact that I gave you eyes and you looked at the darkness (Anagrama) has just appeared and there is only a Catalan edition. The young bookseller explains that they really like Solà, that they have Catalan tourists for the theater festival and that for them the languages ??of the State are not a problem. Other way round.
Saturday, September 30. Irene Solà works as a bookseller for a few hours at Tipos Infames, in the heart of Madrid. There is a queue for me to recommend a book. Behind the table where he serves is also his new novel. In Spanish and Catalan. Alfonso Tordesillas, one of the bookshop’s partners, explains that they try to accommodate the authors they are interested in and facilitate access to the work in their mother tongue for the Catalan population of Madrid who buys them.
“Last year for the Diada we made a selection with titles by Catalan authors with the original work and the translation. We also do things for Galician Language Day. For us it is normal, although many people may still see the co-official languages ??as something specific to a territory and not to what is Spanish. But if you don’t understand that it is part of your own culture, you don’t understand the concept of Spanish literature. Nothing.”
Minutes later, as if it were a Catalan bookshop, she enters Tipos Infames Marta Carnicero (Barcelona, ??1974). The author of El cel segun Google has a reading club that afternoon in another Madrid bookstore, Altamarea, with her novel Matrioixques (Quaderns Crema, in Spanish at Acantilado). “I have always had the good fortune to publish in both languages ??and broaden the range of readers. Sometimes people ask me why I write in Catalan. I always answer that it is the language in which I love, get angry, think and even dream”, he says smiling. And he remembers that the last National Narrative award from the Ministry of Culture went to Marilar Aleixandre with As malas méros (Galàxia), written in Galician: “For me, it is very significant that this award is given to all the languages ??of the Status, which have the same status when being assessed. I hope it continues.”
If the Congress of Deputies has just approved, after almost half a century of democracy, the use of the co-official languages ??and has just been filled with ear muffs, there seem to be green shoots in the world of culture. If some Vox councilors go to libraries to take out children’s magazines in Catalan, and if there is still a wall of misunderstanding in some sectors, there are also more concerts, films, literature and even theater in Galician, Catalan or Basque outside its borders. On Saturday, O corno, shot in Galician by the Basque Jaione Camborda, won the Concha d’Or in Sant Sebastià. And outside Catalonia Alcarràs was seen more in Catalan than dubbed.
In literature, explains publisher Isabel Obiols, from Anagrama, which publishes Irene Solà, Imma Monsó and Pol Guasch, things are changing. “There is more and more editorial receptivity to translate Catalan authors. They are expected authors, such as Eva Baltasar or Marta Orriols. And it doesn’t just happen with big publishers, but also with small ones, such as Malas Tierras with Borja Bagunyà; Tránsito, translated by Eva Piquer, or Sajalín, with Núria Bendicho. Llucia Ramis or Carlota Gurt, who publish in Asteroide, also have a large following abroad. At an event in Salamanca, the booksellers there linked it to the phenomenon of Galician poetry: many, many new poets from there who are translated and widely followed in Spanish”, he indicates. And he reasons that “many are young authors very anchored in the Catalan tradition but who connect with very global interests of today; Besides. there has also been a generational change in the bookshop map: young people are very attentive to the different literatures that are produced here naturally. At the Madrid Book Fair we noticed the interest. We start bringing books in Catalan directly, in Madrid there are many Catalans and even people who dare to take the test of reading in Catalan. This is exciting.”
In the performing arts, the presence of companies and creators from the rest of the State in Madrid is unceasing. On Friday, Carme Portaceli, director of the National Theater of Catalonia, presented her theatrical version of La madre de Frankenstein by Almudena Grandes at the Centro Dramatic Nacional, which will host Àlex Rigola’s Hedda Gabler in November. One of the functions will be in Catalan, and there won’t be any more because it is difficult to project subtitles in its stage box. They also do it with shows in Galician and Basque. Fefa Noia, deputy director of the center, points out that they are very attentive to what happens outside the Madrid scene, to be a national center, and believes that it is also a way to make languages, diversity visible. And the functions are filled. For the Catalan or Basque communities in Madrid and because, he says, “many people want to see the function in the original language”.
Judith Colell, president of the Catalan Film Academy, believes that “watching films in the original version in the other languages ??of the State is starting to become normalized and it should become even more normalized. Successes such as Alcarràs enhance it and help us a lot”, although he wonders what will happen when films with a more commercial vocation arrive. In this sense, Tono Folguera, producer of Alcarràs, but also of Suro and Creatura, says that “when it’s indie cinema, cities like Madrid have no problem with the language; there is the Renoir audience, the Verdi, the Ambassadors. I remember a Friday when Suro had more audiences at the Renoir in Madrid than in Barcelona. As for Creatura, which we have not dubbed, of the ten cinemas where it was seen the most in the first week, four were in Madrid. Yes, there is a problem on a national scale: people won’t see subtitled cinema and if you don’t double the film you can’t open it as much as you’d like.
In this sense, he remembers the new scenario facing cinema in Catalan: “Until now, we have made, due to the budget, films of high quality but not so ambitious for the public. Now we start making films that can be opened to a wider audience.” On the one hand, he says, the Generalitat has been strongly committed to audiovisuals for the past three years. On the other hand, she underlines, Esquerra obtained a clause in the Audiovisual law that obliges television stations to shoot part of their films in co-official languages. “With the new films with a more commercial vocation we have to see how a Valladolid multiplex audience reacts. Eugenio, produced by Antena 3 and which I imagine they will dub, will come out with a significant number of copies and will be the first big test”. And it must be taken into account that when Catalan films are brought to festivals in Jaén or Almeria, “you notice a certain surprise that they liked watching a film in Catalan, they see that there is no drawback. And there you have already broken a wall and gained a future viewer. Spain has done a very bad language policy, despising the official languages, and its media have not been able to bring the languages ??closer to the population. These films come to try to help, I hope very much.”
Pere Almeda, director of the Ramon Llull Institute, which promotes Catalan culture, sees changes, but, he says, “they are tectonic plates that move slowly. In the State there has been an underlying political culture that has rowed against diversity and peripheral languages. In democracy, the situation has stabilized, but there has been no change in the chip. The fact that Catalan can be used in Congress means a lot.” And he acknowledges that in the cultural field “there is a tendency for more penetration of Catalan in many areas of the rest of the State, translations are increasing and this year we opened four reading schools at once”, but he says that it cannot be Catalonia who finances the universities so that Catalan is taught. “If the State assumes its cultural wealth, it must also assume its costs. In a State that recognizes these languages ??and practices them naturally, many people would feel at ease, even independence supporters. There have been many centuries of discourse that have described the Catalan language as something foreign that puts it in danger, when it is a wealth to be protected. Luckily, with culture you create imaginaries, and sometimes they overcome what politics doesn’t achieve”, he concludes.
