It couldn’t be any other way, and no matter who you talked to, the first topic of conversation was the rain, because if it rains today it won’t rain tomorrow – we knew it was true and the water that fell during the La Vanguardia party serves because so be it–.
Laura Gost – winner of Proa with Ashes in the pool – assures that in the end, “as long as it’s not like 2022 it will be enough”. The proximity due to the absence of the terrace makes it difficult to circulate: some groups barely move, but at the same time it is easier for everyone to meet.
Marta Carnicero reunites with some colleagues from the musical group of writers Malalletra, Elisenda Roca, Jordi Campoy and Salvador Macip. Carnicero sees Jesús Carrasco, a writer whom he has been following for some time, and wants to greet him, but on the way he meets the critic Juan Antonio Masoliver and cannot help but greet him. Then, clearly, he loses sight of Carrasco and starts chatting with the writers Carlota Gurt, Melcior Comes and Pere Antoni Pons and the publisher Rosa Rey. Comes, convinced, praises the croquettes, “the best in literature!”, he jokes.
When Carnicero finds the author of Elogio de las manos (Seix Barral), he confesses that every year he is surprised by Sant Jordi, because “it is something unique in the world, no matter how much they try to replicate it in other places it does not end to function if it’s not here, and it’s a shame”.
Monika Zgustová is leaving early, because like so many others today she has a busy day, or maybe more, because in addition to the signings she will do in the morning in Barcelona, ??in the afternoon she presents Soc la Milena de Praga (Galaxia Gutenberg) at the Residencia de Estudiantes from Madrid on the occasion of Franz Kafka’s centenary – the Milena of its title, Milena Jesenská, was much more than a friend of the Czech writer. He doesn’t mind the effort at all.
Josep Martí Blanch sees Jaume Clotet from afar – he won the Josep Pla prize with The Brotherhood of the Fallen Angel (Destino). “Man, the prize-winner!”, he calls out to him before giving himself a big hug and catching up.
When it has stopped raining, people go out on the terrace, where Rodrigo Fresán is chatting about cinema with Ricard Ruiz Garzón – who, of course, is wearing a t-shirt from the Festival 42 he directs. He tells her that he doesn’t expect much anymore, that his demands are not the same as with books, of which he does ask for everything. Then someone tells Fresán that this coming summer he wants to read Moby Dick (the Argentinian writer dedicated a book to Herman Melville), and he says well, that “summer is for having fun”, and at first it seems who wants to say that it is better to devote it to something else, but just in case he insists that it is a great book, that he read it when he was 12 and it fascinated him. And also just in case, ask if you mean the whole book and not an adapted version, which clearly is not the same.
Alongside, Elisenda Roca is now with Agnès Busquets – who is delighted that someone still remembers the book she published a year ago – and Marta Bayarri ( Butterflies don’t bite, Navona) and between one thing and the other the conversation turns to poetry, which Bayarri assures that “you don’t have to understand it, it’s like a landscape, it’s always there and it’s you, as a reader, who has to know how to see it “.
A little further but already sheltered from the four drops that are now falling, the South African writer Lauren Beukes is very excited because although she has come to Barcelona other times – it was to say this and Ruiz Garzón appeared, because effectively he came to the first edition of Festival 42–, he has heard a lot about Sant Jordi and can’t wait to be there to sign a few copies of Bridge ( Mai Més).
