A book rests on the side of the sculpture that Apel·les Fenosa dedicated to the composer and cellist Pau Casals in front of Turó Park, in Barcelona. Time passes, people look askance at him, but no one dares to take him, because they trust that his forgetful owner will return at one time or another for him. A man with a cane even reaches to pick it up, but he doesn’t open it. Had he done so, he would have noticed that Francisco de Paula, better known as Blue Jeans, has signed the first page “to the unknown reader who finds it.”
Her latest work, A dead influencer in Paris (Planet / Column), is part of a bookcrossing initiative carried out this week before Sant Jordi by the QF supplement of La Vanguardia. This and nine other books, all of them signed and dedicated to an anonymous reader, have been hidden in different parts of the city that have some relationship with literature, such as Diamant Square, which Mercè Rodoreda turned into the protagonist; or the intersection between Caponata and Osi streets, where two Nobel Prize winners in Literature, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, met.
Fifteen minutes after the aforementioned youth novel was released, a woman who works in the park approaches and hesitates whether to take it to the information point, along with other lost objects. But she does dare to look inside its pages and savor the smell of a new book. Her colleagues, who were rushing the last few minutes of rest before returning to work, come over to see what she is looking at.
“It’s signed!” he suddenly exclaims. “Where does this come from? “There is a note.” The folio explains the initiative and the woman, Isabel Núñez, looks from side to side to make sure that it is not a trap and that, really, she has permission to take a new reading to her house. After a few minutes of observation and emotion, she realizes that yes, this is a gift for her.
“He did not know very well what to do. I read the synopsis and I was curious. It was then that I noticed that there was something written,” she confesses upon learning about the initiative, and excited to have a signed copy. “Knowing there is more, I will walk down the street with my eyes wide open.”
The literary tour proposed by QF can be found both in the paper supplement and on the newspaper’s website. There are several authors who wanted to participate, enthusiastic about La Vanguardia’s proposal, such as Eduardo Mendoza, Clara Queraltó, the comedian Henar Álvarez or the presenter and recent Planeta winner Sonsoles Ónega. Who knows if any of the books are still in their place or if, once read, they return to the street, waiting to be found by another reader. A doubt that is impossible to resolve if one does not dare to check it. What better plan could there be the weekend before Sant Jordi than a literary route through Barcelona?
