Jordi Coca, Esteve Miralles, Juan Gómez Bárcena i Josefina Caball han guanyat els premis Ciutat de Barcelona 2022 en les categories d’assaig, literatura en català i castellà i traducció. The awards have an endowment of 9,500 euros and will be presented on February 15 in a ceremony at the Saló de Cent of Barcelona City Council, which has promoted them since 1949. Born as literary prizes, they have subsequently incorporated other artistic disciplines as well as also scientific research and educational projects.
The jury of the Ciutat de Barcelona Agustí Duran i Sanpere d'Essaig, Humanitats i Història de Barcelona prize has decided to award the work Shakespeare's theater in its context, by Jordi Coca, published by Edicions de 1984 and Edicions Institut del Teatre for his "outstanding contribution" to an "innovative and demystifying reading of one of the great authors of universal literature based on the consideration of his work in the historical context in which it was created".
The Ciutat de Barcelona prize for literature in the Catalan language went to the work El meu amic, by Esteve Miralles, published by Angle Editorial, for "intertwining a personal story with the social and political portrait of Catalonia in the last decades through an agile narrative game and an exemplary style refinement".
As for literature in the Spanish language, the jury has awarded the Ciutat de Barcelona prize to the work Lo demás es aire, by Juan Gómez Bárcena, published by the Seix Barral Publishing House, for the "formal risk of the work, which achieves to condense in the anonymous lives of a small town the most universal experiences, contradictions and longings". "With a very sophisticated work of language and time, in tension between tradition and rupture, the author signs a novel that, despite its experimental character, is not artificial, very intellectually exciting and very intimate", he remarks the jury
Finally, the Ciutat de Barcelona award for Catalan language translation went to Josefina Caball with the translation of El color porpra, by Alice Walker, published by Proa, for her "fresh and lively style and for verisimilitude and daring of the linguistic bet".
The endowment of the awards increased in 2021, when the Barcelona City Council recovered them after the pandemic, while maintaining the Barcelona Scholarships, because in 2020, for the first time in seventy years, the awards were not given, but were superseded with the scholarships to support the creation.
