This new edition of Setmana breaks records, such as the number of exhibitors with 287 and a program with more than three hundred activities displayed in these ten days of reading celebration, which started yesterday, at the opening ceremony with the Premi d’Honor of the Catalan Letters 2023, Josep Piera. Also this year, representatives from all Catalan-speaking territories meet for the first time, with the incorporation of Catalunya Nord. There will be space for poetry, concerts, theater, book presentations, talks with authors, signatures, literary itineraries, workshops for children and thematic sessions where they will talk about comics, crime novels, gastronomy, science and even love, with a themed afternoon with books dedicated to one of the great driving forces of literature and life where writers such as Carlota Gurt or Andreu Gomila will speak.

Also tributes and recognitions, such as the 2023 Difusió Prize for the musician Roger Mas and the Trajectòria Prize for the writer and journalist Mercè Ibarz. And all this in a festive atmosphere, under the open sky, with the presence of food-trucks for those who want to recharge their batteries. In the command room of this outbreak of events is Cristina Domènech, a Law graduate and expert in cultural management.

He commented that he wants Book Week to be a festival, a party…

It is that reading is very stimulating, it is by no means boring!

And for the unconvinced, how do you explain that reading is not a funereal and boring thing?

This discourse revolves around good books and precisely in Setmana, with the programming of activities, we want to seduce the future reader, teaching them all the richness of the book in Catalan, with fiction, non-fiction, travel books, cooking books, science books. .. the magazines… A whole world.

This edition arrives at Moll de la Fusta with a record of 287 exhibitors and it seems that it is the limit of space. What happens if new requests are added to be there? Is there a risk of dying of success?

We will not grow any more, we are at the limit, but that does not mean that we do not make an effort to attend to as many requests as possible and integrate it in some way. In fact, it has always been done to try to ensure that all the labels that want to be in Setmana are represented.

Last year some professionals complained about such long opening hours on Setmana, especially in the mornings, when sales were weak during the week…

Last year was very good, in terms of attendance and also sales. In fact it was a record edition. It was decided to open every morning but we are looking for an audience for each day. That is why the agreement with Òmnium, with a morning for its members, and also the day of schools, with a specific program for primary, ESO and Baccalaureate students. Obviously, the school morning billing was not the same as the Òmnium morning, but you always have to look at the global and I’m telling you, we surpassed the best editions from when we were in the Cathedral.

Is a book fair more than a market for buying and selling products?

La Setmana goes beyond book sales, it is a festival that values ??books in Catalan, reading in short. There are ten days of promoting reading in Catalan. This is the true objective beyond sales.

Is one of the great challenges of this year to welcome all the Catalan-speaking territories for the first time?

Yes, I think it is the great headline of Setmana. Publishing imprints from all Catalan-speaking territories will be represented. In addition to Catalunya, País Valencià, Balearic Islands and Andorra, this year Catalunya Nord joins. It is very important to unite and show the extraordinary power of our language, especially in complicated times like the ones we live in.

What are other challenges for this year?

In addition to showing the book in Catalan in its entirety, not just literature and news, we want to capture a wide audience, who feel called by Setmana as a transversal space, where many things of different and plural interests happen. We begin the step towards this great objective, which we will not achieve in a year or two, which is to place the Setmana in the country’s calendar, and that they are dates celebrated throughout the world, in all Catalan-speaking territories, where the book in Catalan is at the center, regardless of what happens at the festival in Barcelona.

Sometimes there is a closed and elitist idea of ??culture, which is why I thought it was brave that he said at the Setmana presentation, before all the heads of the sector and the cultural press, that “this year the bar improves!”

It is necessary to read carefully what is behind the improvement of the bar. Last year the importance of Setmana as a space for social relations was seen. Not only among people in the sector but also among readers.

Is that more important than it seems?

A festival has to have spaces for relationships and leisure beyond what happens on stage. And I am very clear about that, you have to be well, you have to be able to stay with your friends, you have to be able to extend and have dinner or have a glass of wine, and even more so having the sea in front of you. This attracts a young and creative audience, who we want to be part of Setmana and help us position it. Imagine, the bar is the tip of the iceberg…

In this 21st century of large flat-rate entertainment platforms with unlimited supply, is it worth continuing to fight for books?

I am convinced that series and novels can coexist. But I also have to say that I believe that today there is an abuse of the use of platforms. When done from the most absolute passivity it can become very poor. There are people who can watch a marathon of episodes of a series and end up in a state of, we would say, mental neglect. That will never happen to you with a book. Reading asks for more, lowers more layers, but in my opinion, it gives you more.