Don’t give up is the mantra. A shower has just fallen in Barcelona’s Eixample, but be warned, the weather report says that at 6.45 p.m., 20 minutes from now, it will stop raining. And this is exactly the time when fourteen authors with books this Sant Jordi have an appointment with La Vanguardia’s team of photographers on the roof of the Alma hotel to be protagonists of the cover of Book Day…
Leaving the elevator, on the seventh and last floor, there are two sofas and the macro rose by Perico Pastor that the painter has willingly ceded as the background of the iconic annual image. The rain subsides, only four drops fall, but it is better not to rush and wait to quench the thirst so that all the authors have accessed the hotel.
– Do you mean? Wouldn’t it be better to go to plan B and take the photo in the restaurant?
But Xavier Cervera is resilient until the end. It is not intimidated by the risk of another unexpected shower catching everyone in the middle of work. The cloudy light will look magnificent, the background with the Sagrada Família is a dream… You have to trust.
And, in this way, the elevator journeys with authors and editors begin. Hernán Díaz, the Argentine Pulitzer who starred in a great success with Fortuna, says he is very honored. He finds it almost as incredible as the fact that Dua Lipa is a self-proclaimed fan and wants to interview him on stream. “You should be happy, I’m just an object in this situation, and, besides, I’m very docile,” he says about the photographic task.
Eduardo Mendoza, however, is reluctant to take his coat in case it’s cold. “Ah, no, I already know how to say no to photographers. If it’s cold, I’ll go”, says the veteran novelist with half a century of Sant Jordis behind him. His new novel, Tres enigmas para la Organización is a detective parody that places – coincidentally, eh – the detective agency near this hotel, where the literary festival of La Vanguardia is held annually. They promise that it will be painless, in no time, before heaven thinks twice, but heaven doesn’t take long to think about it, and it’s too bad.
When Mendoza takes the last elevator in the caldazo, seven floors up a dozen authors and literary agents crowd the corridor that connects the terraces. And, when the doors are opened, what you see is another curtain of water…
Everyone down!
The story of the elevator does not lend itself to a novel. Mendoza, for example, does not see it. But it was worth a few laughs. And the Californian Bonnie Garmus (abbreviation of the complex Polish name of an ancestor) takes it as part of the Barcelona adventure. “I’m delighted to be in Barcelona”. He says it with the smile of an American who has been dreaming of the city since the 1992 Olympic Games. “Being at a literary festival is not at all what I had imagined. It’s mind-blowing to connect with so many readers, especially for me, who didn’t think anyone would even publish my book. And even less if people from all over the world connected in the same way with history. This shows that we have a lot in common and that everyone wants changes”.
He says this because of the bombshell of his Chemistry Lessons, a novel about a chemist who in the fifties is fired from the laboratory and ends up presenting a cooking show… “I just wanted a character to appear on television and, at that time, the only way to appear on camera for a woman was to either be number two or talk about something related to housework. So, I decided to talk about cooking. By the way… did you know that there is a conference in Barcelona in November on chemistry and cooking?”.
The conversation takes place at the time when the material for the photo descends from the roof… The velvet sofas that the hotel left for the set have been saved from the rain by the hairs; Perico Pastor’s painting is lucky to be acrylic; the cameras arrive drier, without a doubt, than the photographers’ backs… In five minutes plan B must be executed in the restaurant, with the garden in the background. Elisa Victoria, author of Otaberra, offers to appear sitting on the floor, in front of the sofas, at the feet of the stellar Hernán Díaz, but they choose to maintain an elegant tone. Sitting next to Garmus, Pablo d’Ors gave way to Mendoza, who insisted on standing on the right side. Regina Rodríguez Sirvent lives with the Barcelona writer for a while like last year with Juana Dolores and Pedro Almodóvar… “He doesn’t know what it means to me to meet him in person, since I was little they were always present Mendoza’s books”.
Carme Riera raises the glass together with Javier Gomá (who only has three books this Sant Jordi), while Ramon Gener and César Pérez Gellida smile behind. The photo session seemed impossible, but they are here… María Belmonte, Roberto Corral, Sergi Pàmies and Eva Baltasar smiling…
