Saturday July 1st. Almagro, start of its classical theater festival. In the window of the small Macondo bookstore, adjacent to the large square of the town of La Mancha – 9,000 inhabitants –, the book of the month changes. It is the new novel by Irene Solà. Nothing 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 because of the theater festival they have Catalan tourists and that for them the languages ??of the State are not a problem. The other way around.
Saturday September 30. Irene Solà works as a bookseller for a few hours in Tipos Infames, in the heart of Madrid. There is a line for her to recommend a book. Behind the table where she is serving is also her new novel. In Spanish and Catalan. Alfonso Tordesillas, one of the partners of the bookstore, says that they try to accommodate the authors they are interested in and facilitate access to the work in their mother tongue to the Catalan population of Madrid who buy from 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 on Galician Language Day. For us it is normal, although perhaps many people still see co-official languages ??as something specific to a territory and not to 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 bookstore, Marta Carnicero (Barcelona, ??1974) enters Tipos Infames. The author of El cel segons Google has a reading club that afternoon in another Madrid bookstore, Altamarea, with her novel Matrioixques (Quaderns Crema, in Spanish in Acantilado). “I have always been lucky to publish in both languages ??and expand the spectrum of readers. People sometimes ask me why I write in Catalan. I always answer that it is the language I want, I get angry, I think and I even dream,” she smiles. And remember that the last National Narrative Award from the Ministry of Culture went to Marilar Aleixandre with As malas mulleres (Galaxia), written in Galician: “For me it is very significant that this award is given to all the languages ??of the State, that have the same status when valued. I hope it continues.”
If the Congress of Deputies has just approved, after almost half a century of democracy, the use of co-official languages ??and filling itself with earpieces, in the world of culture there seem to be green shoots. If some Vox councilors go to libraries to remove children’s magazines in Catalan, and if there is still a wall of incomprehension in some sectors, there are also more concerts, films, literature and even theater in Galician, Catalan or Basque outside their borders. On Saturday, O corno, filmed in Galician by the Basque Jaione Camborda, won the Golden Shell in San Sebastián. And outside of Catalonia Alcarràs was seen more in Catalan than dubbed.
In literature, says editor Isabel Obiols, of Anagrama, which publishes Irene Solà, Inma Monsó and Pol Guasch, things are changing. “There is increasingly more editorial receptivity to translating Catalan authors. They are expected authors, like Eva Baltasar or Marta Orriols. And it doesn’t just happen with large publishers, but also with small ones, like Malas Tierras with Borja Bagunyà; Tránsito, which translates Eva Piquer, or Sajalín, with Núria Bendicho. Llucia Ramis or Carlota Gurt, who publish in Asteroid, also have a lot of followers outside. At an event in Salamanca, the booksellers there linked it to the phenomenon of Galician poetry, many new poets from there who are translated and very followed in Spanish,” she points out. And he reasons that “many are young authors very anchored in the Catalan tradition but who connect with very global interests of today and that in addition there has also been a generational change in the map of bookstores, young people very attentive to the different literatures that are made here Natural way. At the Madrid Book Fair we noticed the interest. We began to carry books in Catalan directly, in Madrid there are many Catalans and even people who dare to try reading in Catalan. That’s exciting”.
In performing arts, the presence of companies and creators from the rest of the State in Madrid is incessant. On Friday Carme Portaceli, director of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, presented her theatrical version of The Mother of Frankenstein by Almudena Grandes at the National Dramatic Center, which in November will host Àlex Rigola’s Hedda Gabler. One of the performances will be in Catalan, and there will be no 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, being a national center, and believes that it is also a way to make languages ??and diversity visible. And the functions are filled. Because of the Catalan or Basque communities in Madrid and because, she says, “many people want to see the show in the original language.”
Judith Colell, president of the Catalan Cinema Academy, believes that “watching films in their original version in the other languages ??of the State is beginning to become normalized and should become even more normalized. Successes like Alcarràs enhance it and help us a lot,” although she wonders what will happen when films with a more commercial vocation arrive. In that sense, Tono Folguera, producer of Alcarràs, but also of Suro and Creatura, says that “when it is indie cinema, cities like Madrid do not have any problem with the language, there is the audience of the Renoirs, the Verdi, the Ambassadors. I remember one Friday when Suro had a larger audience at the Renoir in Madrid than in Barcelona. 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 at the national level: people do not go to see subtitled films and if you do not dub the film you cannot open it as much as you would like.
In that sense, he remembers the new scenario that Catalan cinema faces: “Until now we have made high-quality films on a budget but not so ambitious in public. “Now we are starting to make films that can be opened to a larger audience.” On the one hand, he says, the Generalitat has been betting heavily on audiovisuals for three years. On the other hand, he highlights, Esquerra achieved a clause in the audiovisual law that forces 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 the multiplex audiences in Valladolid react. You know that one, about the comedian 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 he says that when he takes films in Catalan to festivals in Jaén or Almería, “you notice a certain surprise that they liked seeing a film in Catalan, they see that there is no problem. And there you have already broken a wall and gained a future viewer. Spain has done very poorly with its linguistic policy, underestimating the official languages, and its media have not known how to bring languages ??closer to the population. These films come to try to help, I hope a lot.”
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 a deep political culture that has rowed against diversity and peripheral languages. In democracy the situation has stabilized but there has been no change of chip. That Catalan can be used in Congress represents a lot.” And he recognizes that in the cultural field “there is a trend of greater penetration of Catalan in many areas of the rest of the State, translations are increasing and this year we have opened four assistantships at once”, but he points out that it cannot be Catalonia that finances the universities to to teach Catalan. “If the State assumes its cultural wealth, it must also assume the costs. In a State that recognizes these languages ??and practices them naturally, many people would feel at ease, even pro-independence supporters. There have been many centuries of discourse that has labeled the Catalan language as something foreign that endangers Spain, when it is a wealth to be protected. Luckily, with culture you create imaginaries, and sometimes they overcome what politics cannot achieve,” he concludes.
