Someday a writer of a Spanish co-official language will win the Nobel Prize for Literature. And it is most likely that he will do it through Hispanic channels. Let me explain: among the pipes that lead to the literary Nobel, there has been a consistent Spanish pipeline in Stockholm for more than a century. From time to time the tap is turned on and the stream of a new Nobel Prize in Hispanic literature comes out. Saramago also benefited from this channel. For decades we Portuguese tried it on our own with good authors, like Miguel Torga, but without success. Meanwhile, there was a moment in Saramago's career when, living in Lanzarote, married to a Spanish journalist and sympathetic to the Iberian union, he was almost as Spanish as he was Portuguese. And that's where the Nobel Prize came out.
In fact, there is currently a real policy, on the part of the Cervantes Institute and sectors of the current and previous Government of Spain, to defend co-official languages. It is not just the calculation generated by the well-known need for Catalan, Galician and Basque votes. We are facing a fundamental strategy: assuming the multiculturalism of the country. And a beautiful corollary of this project would be that one day an author of one of the co-official languages would be awarded in Stockholm.
That said, literature in Catalan has already won, a long time ago, the prize that truly matters: that of being an important and consistent reality. It owes this, not to Scandinavian laurels, but to the wonderful tingle of so many people who, throughout the centuries, did not stop using this language to tell us about their lives and their souls. Great writers, who we all know, but also less famous authors who are the real humus of literature: people dedicated to their art and capable of very beautiful works.
Today I intend to talk to you about three present examples of those tireless builders of literature in Catalan. Firstly, Àlex Susanna, someone recognized in Catalonia, but, in my opinion, not enough. He is a great poet, whose ideal is to form columns of Romanesque art with his verses. Sobriety and depth, therefore. After the anthology Dits tacats (2018), where the reader found an overview of all of his lyrical work since 1978, Susanna is preparing to surprise us with a new collection of poems scheduled for September: Tot és atouch. The author also stands out for his magnificent diaries, especially the most recent series formed by Paisatge amb figures (2020), El món en suspens (2022), which will be completed with La dansa dels dies, scheduled for this January , and L'any més inesperat, which will arrive in September.
Another indefatigable author, but one who stands on completely different scales: Sebastià Bennasar, a Majorcan writer living in Catalonia. With it, we dive into the world of crime novels and the genres considered most popular. Bennasar nurtures an unbridled love for literature and, in his narratives, even in the detective ones, there is always someone trying to carve out a career as a writer, conversing with people who love to read.
His writing is crystal clear and has the same nuclear reactor energy found in Pla's work: new works of his are always coming out. Furthermore, the author feels and practices an exquisite love for Portugal. Three works to get to know this writer: Nocturn de Sant Felip Neri (2013), L’amant secreta (2023) and the set of stories Macondo Beach (2019).
And one more great author: David Jou, an excellent poet and very stimulating essayist, especially for the way he deals with the relationships between science, religious experience and poetry. Jou has a Renaissance profile: he is a man of science with a university degree, but at the same time someone capable of the best lyricism, to which is added the depth of his spiritual adventure. Without a doubt, he would get along well with Leonardo Da Vinci.
And yet, he is largely unknown in 21st century Catalonia. As a gateway to his work, I recommend reading the collection of poems Cant spiritual (2017), which functions as one of the last and most brilliant links in a mystical chain that, from Ramon Llull through Jacint Verdaguer and Joan Maragall, runs through the entire literature in the Catalan language.
I think that the reader, as it happens to me, will already be somewhat intimidated by the atmosphere of haggling, sometimes almost obscene, that has been installed in the current parliamentary majority. And it is a shame because this Government can boast of being building plurinational Spain, one of the hidden challenges of the 1978 Constitution and a beautiful collective horizon. Pedro Sánchez's Cabinet does not insist much on this because it knows that, among its majority, there are groups for which this ideal means nothing. Junts, for example, can be compared to that lady, that gentleman who sleeps with someone, clarifying from the outset that it is not a serious relationship and that they are only going for the pleasures (benefits) of the moment.
The panorama of the political bloc that governs Spain today consists of a mixture of corrosive and contaminating cynicism, on the one hand, and, on the other, stubborn and admirable idealism, an alloy that is not easy to get along with. One would ask the current rulers not to forget that, in the long run, what will save them will be generous idealism because that is what gives real meaning and vigor to what they are doing.
In this brighter framework, if the Spanish State were able to successfully promote authors from the Catalan, Galician or Basque languages towards the Nobel Prize, brilliant paths of hope would open up for national coexistence. It may sound strange now, but I think it will happen.
