Saó, the oldest magazine of the press in Valencian – it was published for the first time in July 1976 – has reached its 500th issue and celebrates it with a special edition that is a tribute to all the people who have made Saó in these 500 magazines .
In this sense, from Saó they point out that it is difficult to imagine those people who in 1976, when the Franco regime still had an absolute presence in our society, both in the State and the Church, saw that the publication could reach number 500. “And We have arrived, which is a great joy because the wind, almost always, has blown against us and has stopped projects that have been started or have just started,” they highlight.
According to the director of the magazine, Vicent Boscà, “the people who have made and make Saó, we have always said that we do not like to be the leading magazine of the press in Valencian in our country, because a normal country would have to have media in their language for many years.” Saó’s success, he adds, “has been precisely the fact that we have been able to bring together people who had different ideologies, but a Valencian vision of society, of ours.” “In fact, Saó would be nothing, he would not have been able to continue to serve society these forty-seven years without having the complicity of the hundreds, the thousands of people who have written to the magazine or, now, also to the website” , he highlights. For this reason, when preparing the Quadern for number 500 of the magazine, at Saó “we thought that we had to value all the people who have made these five hundred magazines possible.”
In this special Quadern you can read the article by Francesc Martínez Sanchis, who makes a type of history from the first years of the magazine, from its birth. There is also another article, written collectively by the Editorial Board, in which the stories and the people who have made them possible are presented, a little from within the house. In addition, the Quadern includes an alphabetical list of all the people who have written to the publication and there are many people who have contributed their text and their opinions. There is also a list of the Quaderns that have been published, as well as the monographs, and also of all the people interviewed by Saó. “We think that, ultimately, the pride of Saó is the work we have been able to do and publish. Even more so, if we see that he has written and been interviewed by a very important part of the * intellectuality of the Valencian Country in the last 47 years,” says Vicent Boscà.
The Quadern also includes an article by Antoni Ariño and Vicent Flor. According to Boscà, “our request was that they reflect on the characteristics of our country and that they think about the paths we can follow in the next twenty years. The x-ray is exhaustive and can serve to reflect a lot on the paths ahead of us.”
With all this, the 500th issue of Saó magazine reaches 116 pages, almost double that of a normal edition and the cover is the work ‘Victorai i foc’ by the painter Antoni Miró. It also includes an interview by Vicent Boscà with the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, who points out: “I am absolutely outraged reading attacks on publications like your magazine in Valencian by the institutions. You do an essential task of disseminating Valencian culture, of the Valencian, and, therefore, from this point of view, you know that you have the full support of the Ministry.”
In addition, the March magazine has the sections of the usual collaborators: the graphic humor of Juli Sanchis ‘Harca’, Plaça de l’Esglesia (Vicent Cardona), Theology and Society (Josep M. Bausset), Foot of page (Vicent Josep Escartí), Literary Country (Rafael Roca), Science (Jordi Solbes and Manel Traver), Cult and Sacred Nature (Daniel Climent and Carles Martín), Enric Arenós “Quique” and Economy and Society (Josep V. Pitxer) . In the Society, Art and Culture and Books sections, you can find the articles signed by Teresa Ciges, Xavier Serra, Josep Manuel San Abdon, Gonçal López-Pampló, Vicent Tronchoni, Alfred Ramos, Carles Crespo and Manel Rodríguez-Castelló.
