Do you notice the proximity of Sant Jordi? Cultural journalists are often asked this question, and this chronicle is an example of the difficulty of choosing and the failed attempts to reach everywhere. We do not have the gift of ubiquity and the hours of the day are finite.
On Tuesday, in the Alibri bookstore, Josep Carles Rius presents Journalism and democracy in the era of emotions (UB Editions) in very good company, not only in the round table he shares with the director of La Vanguardia, Jordi Juan, the director of La Marea, Magda Bandera, and the president of the College of Journalists of Catalonia, Joan Maria Morros, but with a multitude of professional colleagues, such as Rosa Maria Calaf, Albert Om, Jesús Martínez, Estel Huguet or Andreu Claret , as well as colleagues and former colleagues of this newspaper, where Rius was deputy director, such as Rafael Jorba, Josep Playà, David Dusster or Cristina Jolonch. There is also the lawyer Magda Oranich, the editor and professor of the UB Joan Santanach or the audiovisual producer Xavier Atance. If we were to quote them all, we wouldn’t fit.
Jordi Juan says that the presentation is “a good excuse to meet and talk about the job,” and Rius says yes, but that “we would have to find a way to not give me so much work.” There are 464 pages about committed journalism and how the profession has treated the pandemic, Brexit, the rise and fall of Donald Trump, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the massacre in Palestine and also, of course, the independence process in Catalonia, “ the one that has touched us most closely,” says the author, “with emotions as a common thread.” He remembers that “there is no democracy without journalism, nor journalism without democracy” and defends the “responsibility of sharing and transmitting knowledge from generation to generation” that the press has.
The rector of the University of Barcelona, ??Joan Guàrdia, arrives mid-conversation to vindicate the university publishing house, which he compares to those of Oxford and Cambridge. “They would like to have books like this,” he says, which helps him “avoid the feeling of being a confused and disturbed citizen.” He concludes that “what we have learned does not belong to us, we have the obligation to transmit it.”
Since Finestres is one street away, I go over to see if the presentation of the complete poems of Joan Salvat-Papasseit still lasts (in plural, because there are two versions, that of Edicions 62 and that of Lo Diable Gros/Godall). Only Ferran Aisa (curator of Any Salvat) and Joan Vinuesa remain at the door, with whom we go to have a drink at the bar on the corner and chat about the years of poetry, recitals and painting.
The next day, at the Fàbrica Lehmann there is a poker of jacks, with no more dance than that of words, because Julià de Jòdar presents La casa tapiada (Comanegra) with Julià Guillamon, Júlia Ojeda and Laura Tejada. Among the audience are, attentively, Eduard Márquez, Fèlix Riera, David Fernàndez, Gemma Sardà and Magí Camps. Guillamon, who wants to speak more as a writer than as a critic, draws a line of continuity between Xavier Benguerel, De Jòdar and himself with the treatment of the “silenced working class”, due to the “interrelation between figures and ways of recognizing those without voice”. Ojeda does want to be a critic and puts the author and novel on a par with Philip and Joseph Roth, Conrad, Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. Even more: “He’s our Faulkner.” “We must celebrate his existence and the capacity of a visionary genius,” he emphasizes. Tejada says that she is a character in the book, and brings us closer to her life with parallels to the novel, to end with a story defending “the indoctrination” that has led her to be a writer “only in Catalan” in “the country that we had won and what we are losing.” De Jòdar speaks of the “internal dialogue between the stories of the characters and the readers” in a novel that he defines as the “revision of youthful optimism and the balance of contemporary disappointment”, “between the present and the shadow of the past”, and It leaves the door open to a new installment, but does not ensure that it is “the great novel of the process” that Ojeda claims.
I’m trying to get to the presentation at the Museu de l’Art Prohibito of the Horitzons magazine, which Antoni Gelonch (who chairs the Horitzons 2025 Foundation) and Francesc Canosa as director have started from Ponent, but I can only say hello to some of the assistants among the crowd leaving, such as the poet Meritxell Cucurella-Jorba and the artist Rosó Cusó, with whom we return to the same corner as the day before.
The next day I decide that it won’t be worth running so much, because there is a party at the Antiga Fàbrica Damm: Regina Rodríguez Sirvent is not presenting Les calces al sol (La Campana/Suma de Letras), but is celebrating the 50,000 copies she has sold in a year and a half. There are the writers Carlota Gurt and Anna Manso, the journalists Imma Sust and Laura Fa, and the image consultant Anna Pontnou is accompanied by the first lady, Janina Juli. A part of the editorial team has also come: the head of communications Laia Collet, Anna Jolis – the first one who read it in the publishing house and made her bet on it –, Sílvia Fornells or the director and editorial coordinator of the group, Juan Díaz.
“It’s the first time I’ve gone to a panty party,” says Antoni Bassas, who acts as master of ceremonies and remembers the first presentation, 83 weeks ago, with the chef Joan Roca in the front row. The author explains that in this time, “a whole life,” she has had “a lot of happiness, like I would never have imagined,” but she has also known “a lot of darkness,” in reference to the very premature birth of her son Bruc – who is in her arms. of the father, the illustrator Guillem H. Pongiluppi. One of the things that has surprised her the most is “the people who, when the book ends, take a step they didn’t dare to take before.”
“Regina was very clear about some things that would happen, and that normally do not happen,” says editor Joan Riambau from the stage, and claims the Creu de Sant Jordi for the author for “having broadened the base of readers in Catalan,” because “ Catalan literature very rarely has an impact like this book.” Melcior Comes, who was his teacher at the Escola d’Scriptura del Ateneu Barcelonès, insists that “I don’t teach anything, I just point out and argue what I like and what I don’t,” and speaks of “natural talent, a freshness behind which he saw sophistication”, with an “extravagant point of humor”. He demands a continuation of Rita Racons’ life, “I would force her to do it, that she call the Mossos, if necessary!” “She has a novel in her head, which is herself, like Josep Pla,” he explains. Anna Mestres, a friend and reader of the book before it was published – and who is the narrator of the audiobook – reads a fragment about the character of Six, who “turns out her name is Lidia Climent and she is here.” She hasn’t wanted to read the book until now, and she finished it “eight days ago, because it’s complicated to be a character and not be a protagonist,” she says. She recognizes herself, but although they question her, she does not elaborate much on “the lesbian scene” beyond saying that she “explains very well the experience of a first time when you are already of an age.” Bassas has missed more public talk, in the media, about the “shoes phenomenon.” We have done it again.
Ya es tarde cuando lamo call Adrià Pujol Cruells, who has just presented his Sixty-six sinofosos (H
I don’t quite see that double dates work, but there are more of them every day. At least until Sant Jordi, but maybe you can’t be everywhere at the same time.
Catalan version, here
