“One day, the morning after a party, I found confetti in my pocket. ‘They are the crumbs of yesterday’s happiness’, I thought”, explains Jordi Puntí at the root of Confeti, the title with which he won the 64th Sant Jordi award for novels, which was awarded this Tuesday at the National Theater of Catalonia on the 73rd Night of Santa Llúcia, the Festival of Catalan Letters of Òmnium Cultural.
It has been almost 14 years since those Maletes perdudes, the first and so far only novel by the writer, translator and journalist, and some characters in that novel were already listening to the music of Xavier Cugat, the protagonist of the award-winning book, which Proa will publish next February . The prize is worth 60,000 euros. Although the plot revolves around the life of the famous musician, with a documented portrait of the 20th century through which he travels, Puntí assures that it is rather “the anti-biography of Xavier Cugat”, because just as he “was a great storyteller, where Reality did not arrive, it was invented, because fiction manipulates reality.” The jury, made up of Sebastià Alzamora, Maria Dasca, Manuel Forcano, Marcel Mauri, Mercè Sarrias, Simona Škrabec and Carme Vidal Huguet, describes it as “an exuberant, detailed and very well-documented and fabled work.” For the author, Cugat “had great moments of happiness, but living life as if it were a movie can also be a way to overcome unhappiness.”
Before presenting him with the award, the president of Òmnium Cultural, Xavier Antich, praised reading, because “it makes us free, it is a supplement to life. Reading is an act of resistance that religates us to a language community, Catalan.” “We must radically commit, as a country, to reading, starting with schools and institutes, so that our commitment to freedom and a mature society is credible,” he added.
The 65th Carles Riba Poetry Prize, with 5,000 euros, went to Mireia Calafell’s book Si una emergència, a collection of poems written from “the idea of ??the end of the world as the only possible destiny, with the climate crisis, the sexist crimes, genocides or the rise of the extreme right.” Calafell, who adds the Amadeu Oller award in 2006, the Lletra d’Or in 2015 and the Cavall Verd de la Crítica in 2021, described the emergence as “making the future present as a possibility”, and structures the book, of “poems very brief and without punctuation, quite plastic”, in two parts, the first where he talks about “the end of a world of relationships and love”, however “after an end there is a beginning, and here we recover desire, the body and a certain joy of living.”
The 26th Mercè Rodoreda Prize for short stories and narratives, worth 6,000 euros, went to Perdona’m per desitjar-ho tant, the first book by actress Carme Serna. The jury has awarded him for “dealing with contemporary issues related to women with an expressive style that creates a very own and unique literary universe”, while at the same time tracing a “conducting thread around the ideas of unhappy girls, abuse or sexuality.” The author has defined it as “a reflection on friendship, couple or family relationships, with many splinters, which is where the complicity of human relationships lies.” For the winner, “the pain becomes more breathable because the characters, who are strong women, find a light, a spark of beauty to which they embrace.”
The 61st Josep Maria Folch i Torres prize for children’s novels –4,000 euros–, on the other hand, has been for a veteran, since it is the third time that Lluís Prats has obtained this award, this time with Wen i Long, a novel inspired In the song Paf was a magical drac: a dragon adopts an abandoned girl and takes her through ancient China looking for a family that loves her and living many adventures.
Regarding the 50th Joaquim Ruyra Prize for Youth Fiction, worth 6,000 euros, the winner was Raquel Casas, with Ferida, which portrays “the less luminous side of adolescence mixed with hope thanks to the help of literature.” . In the book, a sixteen-year-old girl, haunted by guilt and remorse, despite having an apparently idyllic life, is admitted to a clinic for a crime. According to the jury, it is “an unforgettable journey into the mind of a complex and difficult protagonist.”
At the gala, the Muriel Casals Communication Award was also presented, at Edicions Cavall Fort, “for the recognition of its history and for the resilience of a project in the fight for the Catalan language and culture.” The Joan B. Cendrós International Award, on the other hand, went to Aitana Bonmatí – who, unable to attend, sent a video of gratitude – “on the occasion of her acceptance speech for the most relevant award in football worldwide, the Ball de Oro, which he did almost entirely in Catalan”
Catalan version, here
