Esther is from Lleida but she has decided to spend the weekend in Barcelona to meet Javier Castillo, her favorite writer. “It made me very angry not to be able to go to his book signing the last time he was there, so this Sunday does not happen,” she assured La Vanguardia this morning with conviction. Her friend was not so sure. Despite getting up early and having been in line for three hours, they couldn’t see the end. “We’ll cross our fingers.”
The author from Malaga was quick to write dedications. However, he lamented a few hours later, during the traditional Penguin Random House lunch, that “about three hundred people have been left without a signature. But they have said that they will come to the meeting in the afternoon. Everyone has been very understanding.”
ElÃsabet Benavent calls this situation the “Sant Jordi protocol. I have been lucky enough to celebrate many April 23rd and book fairs in my career and I know how far I can take on in a limited amount of time. So, so that people do not wait in vain, we cut the queue. But there is always someone who stays just in case. If they are few, sometimes they have a prize. But many times it is not something that depends on the authors. The first ones who get sad because we don’t know all the readers are usâ€.
The queues that formed around the Inma Rubiales stand are just as enviable. On Saturday he explained during La Vanguardia’s Sant Jordi party that last year his fans “did not get out of line despite the hail. I had to go up and ask them to take shelter, but they didn’t want to move.” This time, they have done the same, but in full sun. For a few hours, Rubiales has become someone more popular than a rock singer. This has been indicated by the screams of her readers when she has appeared with her pen in Plaza Catalunya.
Another of the most beloved and expected authors of the day is Alice Kellen, whose signing marathon only allows her to have an hour to eat, like the rest of her colleagues. “Although I have been living this madness for a long time, I admit that I still get just as nervous as the first day,” she acknowledged days before.
Despite the long journey, all of them assure that it is “a pleasure” to distort those who are so interested in their stories. Benavent jokes and assures that she is not worried about wrist pain. “Nothing happens, everything is cured with a good massage. But no one takes away from me how happy I’m going to sleep today.
