The writers Roser Cabré-Verdiell (Aioua, Males Herbes) and Xavier Bosch (March 32, Univers/Catedral) set the tone for the start of Sant Jordi’s week this Monday at the palace of the Generalitat de Catalunya, among the institutional speeches by the Minister of Culture, Natà lia Garriga, and the president, Pere Aragonès.
In an act that is consolidated with this second edition (Josep Vallverdú starred in it last year), Cabré-Verdiell told a story she herself starred in on April 23, 1991: a girl who does not win the floral games of school and, sad, walks with her mother among the crowd and the flood of books, she sees a woman writing who says to her: “You are here for the gargoyle!”. The girl looks for the fantastic animal, does not find it and, of course, gets lost. He ends up in the Generalitat palace itself, guarded by a policeman who tells him: “You don’t have sparrows on your head, but gargoyles”. The girl hasn’t found the gargoyle, yet, but she hasn’t lost her curiosity or her desire to explore the world, the fantasy that leads to literature.
To make his speech, Bosch asked a hundred people why they read, and among the answers “so many heads, so many hats”, such as: to live, to laugh, to survive – from an oncology treatment room -, to learn , to forget, to remember, to understand the world, to heal, to resist, to freak out, to mature, to cry, to be faithful to the language, to a way of understanding feelings, to distinguish between the good and the bad in history, to put yourself in their shoes of those who don’t think like you, to fall in love, to escape, as therapy, not to look at screens, not to die, to sleep, to be free or to bet on peace -always!-, to live, to laugh and love the words… “in the end, to be happy”.
Earlier, the minister had praised reading by emphasizing the National Book and Reading Plan, which aims to increase reading rates and “make culture reach all citizens”.
President Aragonès, for his part, has spoken of culture as a “basic piece in the configuration of the country”, “with all the accents and all the riches of Catalonia” and has made a call to “overcome the self-indulgent mirage of recent years in relation to the language and to make a more accurate diagnosis” of where we are”. To end the event, before the refreshments in the Tarongers patio, a video of the singer Julieta was shown.
The event was attended by a hundred guests, including a good political representation, such as the vice-president of Parliament acting as president, Alba Vergés; former president José Montilla; the Ministers of Justice, Gemma Ubasart; of Education, Josep Cambray; of Territory, Juli Fernández; of Health, Manel Balcells, and of Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena; as well as the head of the opposition, Salvador Illa; or the deputy mayor of Barcelona, ​​Albert Batet. There was also the director of the Institution of Catalan Letters (ILC), Izaskun Arretxe; the director of the Ramon Llull Institute (IRL), Pere Almeda; the Secretary of Linguistic Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila; the president of the Catalan Language Writers Association, Sebastià Portell; the president of the Chamber of Books, Patrici Tixis, the publishers Ester Pujol, Oriol Magrinyà or Joan Carles Girbés or the coordinator of the National Book and Reading Plan, Montse Ayats, among other personalities from the cultural world.
