Sant Jordi does not give respite, especially when there is so little left until the day. On Monday, Luz de Gas opened its doors wide open to present the book El gran Peret (Larousse, in double Catalan and Spanish edition). The son of the half friend has had a luxurious biographer, Rogeli Herrero, one of the souls of Los Manolos. Albert Om acted as interviewer and we ended up knowing that, at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, where Peret and Los Manolos sang together for the first time, at no time did they perform Friends for Forever. Those in charge of doing it were Josep Carreras and Sarah Brightman, but memory is very treacherous.
“England has the Beatles; the USA, Elvis, and us, Peret”, affirms Herrero, who, in the words of Om, has written “a love letter” to the king of rumba. “Peret was a great salesman, like his father, and a great seducer, and we were lucky that he fell on the side of music and not commerce – explains the author. I wrote the book with respect and admiration for him.”
As for the photographs, the family provided him with the family album. “I went to find them by bicycle and with a big backpack, and they gave me a trunk full of photos. I had to go home by taxi”, he remembers. The same rumble ended with five songs by Peret performed by Rogeli Herrero and a combo in which the pianist son of the author, who has the same name as him and who is also his grandfather, stood out in his own light. who was a colleague of La Vanguardia’s workshop.
On Tuesday, another forever friend and colleague from the newspaper makes a presentation at the Merricat bookstore. But the group of friends and admirers is so large, that some stay in the street and poke their noses out to catch a few phrases. The one presenting the book is Albert Molins, journalist and fine-nosed gourmet, who has written Comer sin pedir permiso (Rosamerón), an essay on good food in which he also dismantles myths and peels them with a sharp knife. He presents the book Miquel Bonet, who reveals: “I owe a lot to Albert from an intellectual and personal point of view”, and defines the volume as “a book about gastronomic culture”.
Bonet highlights the large number of sources that the author cites in the book. “I’m a journalist – says Molins – and journalists work with sources”. But the presenter also notes that there is a chapter on sex and food, which is his favorite, where there are no sources… Molins replies that “the chapters on death and sex are there because food is absolutely linked in life”. And he issues a warning: “There are those who take refuge in alcohol or drugs, and we do it in food. But, be warned, food can be a shelter value to hide emotional disorders.”
When it comes to questions, Arnau, who is 10 years old and the author’s nephew, sits in the front row, asking what sex has to do with food and asking for permission. Great question that the uncle promises to answer in a few years.
On Wednesday, in Ona, while Jordi Cabré presents the testimonial book he has written about the former councilor of the Generalitat and mayor of Barcelona Xavier Trias, In conclusion in another part of the bookstore the Californian writer Kerri Maher, author of the bestseller The Paris bookseller talks about the novel A l’altra banda de la línea (Navona, in double Catalan and Spanish edition).
With the librarian Mixa, those present get to know some of the details of the Chicago Jane Collective, which is the historical basis of Maher’s novel. “Jane was the code name for asking for help to perform illegal but safe abortions”, says Maher, who emphasizes that the network worked mainly for black women, with fewer resources, who were helped to travel to the New York state, where abortion was legal. With donations and sorority, 11,000 abortions were performed, an approximate figure because, due to the illegal nature of the group, there are no records.
And there are only three days left until Sant Jordi.
