It has been a long time since we have remembered such long lines in Sant Jordi to meet someone who is not the true author of a book. This is what the Madrid illustrator Pedro Oyarbide, responsible for the covers of the Blackwater saga, experienced yesterday, the serial novels written by Michael McDowell in the eighties and which now, after landing in Spain with Blackie Books, have revived their success. “It is true that the aesthetics of the book have been very important for the readers and have influenced the marketing,” he confessed to La Vanguardia an hour before arriving at his first stop, where many fans have passed by to meet him and to have him seal them. its edition with a bookplate created specifically.
There are many anecdotes that he left yesterday. A day full of ink, and not only because of the pens that the writers used – many had already finished one or two before noon – but because of the many literary tattoos with which readers approached the stands. Ángel Martín, who after the publishing phenomenon of Por si las voices Volver (2021), where he narrates his episodes of schizophrenia, returns to bookstores with Behind the noise (Planeta), and says that “there are many people who have shown me tattoos with phrases from my book. But the craziest thing that has happened is that a girl asked me a while ago to sign her arm and today she showed up with my signature tattoo.”
The composer Beatriz Luengo and the writers Alice Kellen and Eva García Sáenz de Urturi have lived a similar experience. “For you to tattoo something for life, the novel has had to be important,” reflects the latter, who last year was the best-selling author of fiction in Spanish.
Carme Riera has a few Sant Jordi under her belt and has a lot to tell, but this Tuesday a private reader asked her to dedicate her latest novel, Una ombra blanca (Edicions 62), to “the queen.” She has gotten by by playing with language, with a dedication “to Queen.” It is not the first time that something similar has happened to her, since on one occasion she was already asked for a dedication to “Empress Sisi.” But that would be another story, and at his side Alfred Bosch remembers when twenty years ago they wrote the manifesto “El Drac es menja Sant Jordi” – with Gemma Lienas, Baltasar Porcel, Robert Saladrigas, Isabel-Clara Simó, Emili Teixidor and Ferran Torrent – because the presence of Catalan literature was lackluster at this festival.
For Luis Landero, Sant Jordi always serves “for readers to help me decipher what the hell I have written. And, the truth is, everything they have told me about The Last Function (Tusquets) exceeds my expectations.” They have also surpassed them for first-timers like the winner of the Edhasa award, Roberto Corral, who applauds “the great power of convocation of what I consider a party with all the letters” or for the comedian and screenwriter Henar Álvarez, who smiled every time someone He approached with a t-shirt with his motto “I lose my form but not my reason.”
The virtuality to which the pandemic accustomed us was also very present, as many met their favorite writers over the telephone. “My friend María is sick and she was sad for not meeting Javier Castillo, but I’m going to try to connect so she can see him live,” planned a reader, who had been in line for more than an hour waiting to meet the man from Malaga.
The editor of La Segona Perifèria, Miquel Adam, did not understand that on such an important date someone would address him, loudly in the middle of Passeig de Gràcia, offering him a manuscript. But it turned out that it was Francisco Llorca, a resident of the booth and editor of Las Afueras, who wanted to play a joke on him, because they only knew each other from the networks and thus they became devirtualized.
Gerard Quintana, who spent the entire day up and down, sees that each position has its idiosyncrasy and explains that in one he had an influencer next to him with a perfume so powerful that to survive he had to resort to patchouli. Many have approached him to tell him things about Sopa de Cabra, and he adapts with good humor, although before eating, trying to navigate Passeig de Gràcia, he could not help but be startled by the tourists who “seem like they have never seen a building.” . Just then, the overcrowding punishes a bike and a scooter, which fall without major consequences after being pushed by a crowded pedestrian. An urban guard makes peace and nothing has happened here.
Coexistence with tourism has also caused some curious moments at the ViBop publishing house, right in front of Casa Batlló, since the cover of Les arts xineses de l’ebrietat, by Manel Ollé, includes an ideogram in Chinese, and many tourists stopped to look through the book with curiosity. But no one bought it. Her editor, Montse Serra, then says that she has seen many people with mobile phones in hand heading towards her books. But no, what they were doing was a selfie with Gaudí’s building in the background…
