One summer day, invited by some friends to Tossa de Mar, the writer and journalist Jordi Solé (Sabadell, 1966), was surprised by how present the legendary actress Ava Gardner is in this corner of the Costa Brava.
The filming of Pandora and the Wandering Dutchman, in 1950, in this municipality and others in Girona marked a turning point for tourism. “I thought there was a story there,” says Solé. And that history has won him the 56th Prudenci Bertrana prize for novels, endowed with 30,000 euros, which the Prudenci Bertrana Foundation has awarded today in the Girona Auditorium.
In L’any que vaig esteem Ava Gardner (Columna), the protagonist is a young man who was 15 years old when he met the legendary actress, thirteen years older, during that filming. In 1990, after the death of the artist, that young man, now an adult, recalled those days when Tossa became a movie set and when he loved Ava Gardner.
“Facing a love story was a challenge for me, I have left my comfort zone,” Solé acknowledged yesterday, who has imbibed the filmography and bibliography about the actress. “Reading her memoirs, she seemed like a funny character to me, with a sense of humor, tender and also a liar,” she explains.
A novel in which there is no shortage of characters linked to the Gardner universe such as the bullfighter Mario Cabré with whom it is said that he had an affair during that filming or the singer Frank Sinatra, who in a fit of jealousy appeared on the Costa Brava.
The Miquel de Palol poetry prize, worth 6,000 euros, went to Jordi Solà Coll (Barcelona, ??1963) with L’ombra de les hores, whose central theme is the passage of time. “A time that is fleeting and fragile and is projected like a shadow,” said its author. A work with decasyllables and hexasyllables divided into three parts, whose common link is nature.
The Carles Rahola essay, also endowed with 6,000 euros, was collected by Josep Muñoz Redon (Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, 1957) for El jardí d’Epicur, an exaltation of the concept of friendship and the joy of living close to nature. A book that the author places in the “hybrid genre” since it mixes philosophy, theater, journalism, travel and characters without being a novel.
The teenage children of Sonia Guillén (Terrassa, 1969), winner of the Ramon Muntaner for young people’s novels, were a “source of inspiration” for Cicatrius, a “hard and realistic” vision of this stage of life. A work that the author herself also recommends that parents read in order to open debates that are not usually present in many homes, such as early sexuality, alcohol, social networks… “I think it is ideal to share in family and open debate,” he explains.
The Aurora Bertrana translation award was won by Josep Maria Pinto (Barcelona, ??1962) for the translation of El temps retrobat I and II, the last two volumes of ‘The search for lost time’ written by the French author Marcel Proust between 1908 and 1922 .
The winner who summarizes the work of the translator “how to know the effect that the author has on his language”, highlighted “the recognition” that this figure has in Catalonia, which appears many times on the cover along with the name of the author and the title of the construction site. Something that ensures that it happens less in other countries like France or also in Spanish literature.
The best song lyric in Catalan went to Artur Viñas for Les coses que no m’agré de tu, a love story that ends badly, while the commendable project Curacontes, a proposal for audio stories by the social entrepreneur Marta Michans (Albelda, Huesca 1997) for children who spend long periods in hospital won the Lletra Prize, convened by the Prudenci Bertrana Foundation and the Open University of Catalonia.
