Do you notice the proximity of Sant Jordi? Cultural journalists are often asked this question, and this chronicle is an example of the difficulty of choosing and the failed attempts to reach everywhere.
On Tuesday, at the Alibri bookstore, Josep Carles Rius presents Journalism and democracy in the era of emotions (Edicions de la UB) in very good company, not only in the round table that he shares with the director of La Vanguardia, Jordi Juan, the director of La Marea, Magda Bandera, and the president of the College of Journalists of Catalonia, Joan Maria Morros, but with a multitude of professional colleagues, such as Rosa Maria Calaf, Albert Om, Jesús Martínez, Estel Huguet or Andreu Claret , as well as colleagues and former colleagues from this newspaper, where Rius was deputy director, such as Rafael Jorba or Josep Playà. There is also the lawyer Magda Oranich, the editor and professor at the UB Joan Santanach and the audiovisual producer Xavier Atance. If we cited them all, we wouldn't fit.
Jordi Juan says that the presentation is “a good excuse to meet and talk about the job,” and Rius says yes, but that “we would have to find a way to not give me so much work.” There are 464 pages about committed journalism and how the profession has treated the pandemic, Brexit, the rise and fall of Donald Trump, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the massacre in Palestine and also, of course, the independence process in Catalonia, “the one that has touched us most closely,” says the author, “with emotions as a common thread.” The rector of the University of Barcelona, Joan Guàrdia, claims the university publishing house, which he compares to those of Oxford and Cambridge. “They would like to have books like this,” he says, and concludes that “what we have learned does not belong to us, we have the obligation to transmit it.”
La Finestres is a street away and I approach to see if the presentation of Joan Salvat-Papasseit's complete poems (the one from Edicions 62 and the one from Lo Diable Gros/Godall) is still going on. There are Ferran Aisa (curator of Year Salvat) and Joan Vinuesa at the door, with whom we are going to have something at the bar on the corner.
The next day, at the Fàbrica Lehmann there is a repoker of jacks, with no more dance than that of words, because Julià de Jòdar presents La casa tapiada (Comanegra) with Julià Guillamon, Júlia Ojeda and Laura Tejada. Among the audience are, attentively, Eduard Márquez, Fèlix Riera or David Fernàndez. Guillamon draws a line of continuity between Xavier Benguerel, De Jòdar and himself through the “interrelationship between figures and ways of recognizing the voiceless.” Ojeda is an author and novel on a par with Philip and Joseph Roth, Conrad, Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. Even more: “He's our Faulkner.” Tejada recognizes herself as a character in the book, and she brings us closer to her life with similarities to the novel. De Jòdar speaks of the “internal dialogue between the stories of the characters and the readers” in a novel that he defines as the “revision of youthful optimism and the balance of contemporary disappointment”, “between the present and the shadow of the past”.
I'm trying to get to the presentation at the Museu de l'Art Prohibito of the Horitzons magazine, which Antoni Gelonch (who chairs the Horitzons 2025 Foundation) and Francesc Canosa as director have started from Ponent, but I can only say hello to some of the assistants among the crowd leaving, such as the poet Meritxell Cucurella-Jorba and the artist Rosó Cusó, with whom we returned to the corner from the previous day.
It's already Thursday and there is a party at the Antiga Fàbrica Damm: Regina Rodríguez Sirvent is not presenting Les calces al sol (La Campana), but rather celebrating the 50,000 copies she has sold in a year and a half. There are the writers Carlota Gurt and Anna Manso, the journalists Imma Sust and Laura Fa, and the image consultant Anna Pontnou is accompanied by the first lady, Janina Juli. A part of the editorial team has also come: the head of communications Laia Collet, Anna Jolis –her first reader of hers in the publishing house–, Sílvia Fornells or the director and editorial coordinator of the group, Juan Díaz.
“It's the first time I've gone to a panty party,” says Antoni Bassas, who acts as master of ceremonies. The author explains that in this time, “a whole life,” she has had “a lot of happiness, like I would never have imagined,” but she has also known “a lot of darkness,” in reference to the very premature birth of her son Bruc – who is in her arms. of the father, the illustrator Guillem H. Pongiluppi. Regina also speaks: the editor Joan Riambau –claims the Creu de Sant Jordi for the author for “having broadened the base of readers in Catalan”–, the writer Melcior Comes –her teacher at the Ateneu school–, her friend Anna Mestres –narrator of the audiobook– and Six, a character who “turns out to be called Lidia Climent and she is here.” Bassas misses that the media talks more about the “shoes phenomenon.” We have done it again.
It's late when I call Adrià Pujol Cruells, who has just presented his Sixty-Six Sinofosos Calders (H
I don't quite see that double dates work, but there are more of them every day. At least until Sant Jordi, but maybe you can't be everywhere at the same time.
