We are not talking about Rambla Catalunya, Las Ramblas, or even Paseo de Gràcia with Gran Via. We are talking about Passeig Sant Joan which, full of comics, fantasy and children’s books, is known as the third pole of attraction in the Diada. Over the years it has grown to become an essential part of the Sant Jordi liturgy. The atmosphere can be described in vignettes: children milling around the stands. Fingers that ambush all kinds of books like anemones in search of plankton. Streets pregnant and clogged with pedestrians. Authors and illustrators treated like rock stars. A consensual celebration: the rare becomes common.
A multitude worships those traditionally marginal genres: the “non-book”, the comic. But you are warned when you enter the nicknamed Geek Triangle: commercial geometry in which large internationally recognized bookstores – Norma Comics, Gigamesh – have created a passion for graphic novels, science fiction and role-playing games. Like the Bermuda Triangle, the area destroys convention and the literary field is no exception. In the air pollen coexists with geek pride. When you breathe it, it accumulates in your throat, making you realize that you are the strange one here.
This is how a group of young people in costume remind you, in honor of one of their favorite series adapted from a graphic novel: Hazbin Hotel: El Hotel De Las Viejas Glorias. Hoarders of photos and conversation clarify that “in the (geek) triangle you can find something very special: place.” Place for fantasy freed from prejudice. Their costumes are more than just fun and fanaticism, it is a claim, a warning: there is no shame in the strange.
In the vignette of success: the stand of Norma Comics, a bookstore about to turn forty years old, where readers are accumulating “with the expectation of increasing” comments the manager of the store Germán Puig, who started as a customer at the age of 16 and ended up working more 31 years old in the store. Trusted customer José Mezquida has been proudly coming from Madrid to buy comics for more than 14 years, and this year he repeats. What do both stories share? “Love for the store and comics,” says Mezquida, who when leaving the store says goodbye to Puig as if he were a childhood colleague.
The same love for graphic novels is what motivates some to bring suitcases on the trip, not only because they come from far away but also to be able to carry the amount of comics, board games or mangas that they will take home. The signing tables also monopolize vignettes of the extraordinary. Authors and illustrators improvise drawings as they talk with readers, such as Manel Fontdevila – known for his collaborations in the magazine El Jueves -, who appreciates “going outside and having human contact, after spending months working alone in his studio.”
The contact is also kind for the writer Guillem López, a reference in the fantasy genre, who signs at the Gigamesh stand and considers Sant Jordi “a celebration of culture, the link between readers and writers.” Writers who experience signatures, in López’s words, “as an act of brotherhood.” Signing alongside López is the writer and internet content generator Antonio Runa, who, presenting his second book La Materia de las Sombras, hopes that “it will not be the last of his Sant Jordis.”
Same table, different stand. Masses in joyful boiling. The visual artist Laia López, author of Strawberry Moon or Royalty Witches, defines the moment as “intense, beautiful, full of contagious excitement”, the author of best-sellers Blue Jeans as “the best day of the year” and the cartoonist and writer Miguel Brieva “as the opportunity to experience the industry from within.” Rose petals accumulate between the coats and the only thing that is clear in the tide of passersby is that the comic has reclaimed its dignity. And it’s not just me saying it, it’s a prayer answered, blushing.
Vignettes of emotion and shock. The litter of signatures and the symphony of those who know those who understand them serve as an ideal soundtrack for that place where the strange becomes the norm. Combining the terms means the end of both, but in the Passeig Sant Joan there beats a living rumor, without a petal, without a thorn, that blooms in the dragon’s wound: the pride of the geek, an understanding on the rise.
