This new edition of the Week breaks records, such as that of exhibitors with 287 and a program with more than three hundred activities deployed in these ten days of reading celebration, which started yesterday, at the opening ceremony with the Prize of Honor of Catalan Letters 2023, Josep Piera. Also this year, representatives of all the Catalan-speaking territories meet for the first time, with the addition of Northern Catalonia. There will be space for poetry, concerts, theater, book presentations, talks with authors, signings, literary itineraries, workshops for children and thematic sessions where we will talk about comics, black novels, gastronomy, science and all about love, with a themed afternoon with books dedicated to one of the great engines of literature and life where writers such as Carlota Gurt or Andreu Gomila will speak.
Also tributes and recognitions, such as the 2023 Broadcasting Award for the musician Roger Mas and the Trajectòria Award for the writer and journalist Mercè Ibarz. And all this in a festive atmosphere, in the open air, with the presence of food trucks for those who want to recharge their batteries. In the control room of this burst of events is Cristina Domènech, a graduate of Law and an expert in cultural management.
He has commented that he wants Book Week to be a festival, a party…
It’s just that reading is very stimulating, it’s by no means boring!
And for the unconvinced, how do you explain to them that reading is not something funereal and boring?
This discourse is overturned with good books and precisely during the Week, with the program of activities, we want to seduce the future reader by teaching him all the richness of the book in Catalan, with fiction, non-fiction, travel books, cooking books, science… magazines… A whole world.
This edition arrives at Moll de la Fusta with a record 287 exhibitors and it seems to be the limit of space. What happens if new requests are added to be there? Is there a risk of dying of success?
We won’t grow any more, we’re at the limit, but that doesn’t mean we don’t make an effort to meet as many requests as possible and integrate it in some way. In fact, we have always tried to ensure that all the labels that want to be in the Week are represented there.
Some professionals last year complained about such wide opening hours on the Week, especially in the morning, when sales were weak during the week…
Last year went very well, in terms of attendance and also sales. In fact it was a record edition. It was decided to open every morning but we looked for an audience for each day. That’s why the agreement with Òmnium, with a morning for its members, and also the school day, with a specific program for primary, secondary and high school students. Obviously, the turnover on the school morning was not the same as the Omnium morning, but you always have to look at the overall picture and I’m telling you, we surpassed the best editions of when we were at the Cathedral.
Is a book fair more than a market for buying and selling products?
La Setmana goes beyond book sales, it is a festival that highlights books in Catalan, reading in short. These are ten days of promoting reading in Catalan. This is the real goal beyond sales.
One of the big challenges this year is to welcome all the Catalan-speaking territories for the first time?
Yes, I think it’s the big headline of the week. Publishers from all the Catalan-speaking territories will be represented there. In addition to Catalonia, Valencian Country, the Balearic Islands and Andorra, this year Northern Catalonia is added. It is very important to unite and show the extraordinary power of our language, especially in complicated times like the ones we live in.
What are the other challenges for this year?
In addition to showing the book in Catalan in its entirety, not just literature and novelties, we want to attract a wide audience, who feel called by the Week as a transversal space, where many things of different and plural interests happen . Let’s start the step towards this great goal, which we will not achieve in a year or two, which is to place the Week in the country’s calendar, and for it to be a date celebrated by everyone, in all the Catalan-speaking territories, where the book in Catalan is at the center, regardless of what happens at the festival in Barcelona.
Sometimes there is a closed and elitist idea of ??culture, which is why I thought it was brave that he said in the presentation of the Week, in front of all the heads of the sector and the cultural press, that “this year the bar is improving!”
You need to read carefully what is behind the improvement of the bar. Last year saw the importance of the Week as a space for social relations. Not only among people in the industry but also among readers.
Is this more important than it seems?
A festival must have spaces for relationships and leisure beyond what happens on stage. And this is very clear to me, you have to be comfortable there, you have to be able to stay with friends, you have to be able to linger and have dinner or a glass of wine, and more so with the sea in front of you. This attracts a young and creative audience, which we want to be part of the Week and to help us position it. Imagine, the bar is the tip of the iceberg…
In this 21st century of big flat-rate entertainment platforms with unlimited supply, is it worth it to keep fighting for books?
I am convinced that series and novels can coexist. But I also have to say that I think today there is an abuse of the use of platforms. When it is done from the most absolute passivity it can become very poor. There are people who can marathon episodes of a series and end up in a state of mental exhaustion, so to speak. That will never happen to you with a book. Reading asks for more, peels back more layers, but in my opinion, gives you more.
