A few days after the Valencian Courts refused – with the votes of PP and Vox – to celebrate the year dedicated to the centenary of the birth of Vicent Andrés Estellés (Burjassot, 1924-Valencia, 1993), the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (ILC) has announced the start of the commemoration in Catalonia, yes, but also with events throughout the Catalan-speaking territories and beyond, and many of them, also, in collaboration with the civic platform Cent d’Estellés, made up of numerous Valencian entities. It must be said that the deputations of Valencia and Alicante – where the PP also rules – have indeed declared the Year of Estellés, as well as numerous town councils.

The poet Àngels Gregori will be in charge of curating this year’s program, with the objectives of “reinforcing Estellés’ poetic production as essential reading”, as well as “exporting it beyond our linguistic borders”, deepen – there and also “cohesing the entire linguistic territory through initiatives”, to enjoy his poetry but also “the social imprint he left with a unique voice of an overflowing power”.

The director of the ILC, Izaskun Arretxe, points out the contrast with the Year of the Carpenter, two years ago, which could be celebrated jointly with the Generalitat Valenciana and the Balearic government: “We would very much like to have been able to collaborate now, because you work better as a team and your work could be more widely disseminated”. In any case, “where the institutions do not reach, the people will”. For Gregori, it is another flagrant case of “cultural and linguistic censorship”, but “with what is happening we still want to celebrate it”.

But why should the poet of Burjassot be read today? According to the curator, “he is the most important Valencian poet since Ausiàs Marc, author of a work that you never finish, and you don’t have to suffer even if it seems chaotic and unattainable”, with a wide variety of registers, which combines a marked popular accent – ??”he approached the big issues from small things” – with the rereading of the classics. “We have to rediscover it”, he continues, because “as the poet Enric Sória says, it is recognized, but not enough to be as good as it is”. According to Arretxe, “if you read Estellés you will fall in love with it, and it is about many people reading it and falling in love with it”. He is the author, let’s not forget, of poems such as Els amants, M’aclame a tu or Propietariats de la pena, a poet widely set to music: Ovidi Montllor and Toti Soler, but also Maria Arnal and Marcel Bagés, Obrint Pas, Zoo, Miquel Gil or even The Surfing Sirles.

The institutional programming to celebrate the centenary will properly start on World Poetry Day, on March 21, which will revolve around his poem M’he estimate mot la vida, with a big event at the CCCB, but also in other places in Catalonia . An important emphasis has been placed on the educational field, with didactic dossiers to work on the poet’s work in primary, secondary and high school, but also various academic conferences, such as an international congress at the University of Alicante. Also at the international level, the Ramon Llull Institute has organized several academic and outreach events dedicated to the poet.

Gregori and Arretxe also wanted to highlight the presence Estellés will have in the fairs and literary festivals that take place, whether it is the Girona Poetry Festival or those in Valencia, Lleida, Tarragona or Oliva, in Barcelona Poesia or the Xarxa of Villes del Llibre, among many others. They have also highlighted, for September 26, the so-called “Estellés dinners” – more than eighty are planned – where “literature is celebrated, read and shared in a kind of simultaneous collective catharsis”. remembers Arretxe, who emphasizes that the poet “never stopped claiming the joy of living”. It will even have a falla monument dedicated to it, from the Falla Tio Pep.

But there will also be shows such as two based on El Coral romput – the great poem popularized by Ovidi Montllor and Toti Soler–, one by Pere Arquillué and Toti Soler – who is also doing another recital with Joan Massotkleiner–, and a project stage performance by Marina Alegre and Marc Chornet, or the two productions – one musical and one theatrical – by singer-songwriter Pau Alabajos.

Alabajos, on the other hand, is one of the authors of the publications that leaves the year of the centenary (“the years end, but the books remain”, recalls Arretxe), since he finished publishing the first biography of Estellés , The voice of a village (Sembra Books). The publishing house 3i4, which was instrumental in disseminating his work and which has just published volumes X and XI of the revised complete work – which include part of the monumental Mural of the Valencian Country -, and will publish the XII during this year, in addition to an anthology edited by Jaume Pérez-Montaner, A hidden tenderness, with around 200 poems and more than 400 pages. In addition, Saldonar has just published Oli calent del gresol de la vida, edited by Josep Ballester, the first three books in a single volume, and Peu de Mosca will republish La clau que obri tous les panys, with a foreword by Josep Murgades and il illustrations by Clara-Iris.

A monumental work, but at the same time popular and not unattainable. Who’s afraid of poetry?