After Catalonia, Spain, and the European Union, it is time for Barcelona to appear at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) as a guest literary ecosystem. It will be in 2025, as announced today by the mayor, Jaume Collboni.
Having obtained this invitation is a great achievement that entails major challenges: the city, considered one of the book capitals of the world, will be tested in a square that is as strong or stronger than it: Sant Jordi and a literary tradition that starts in the 11th century in front of the largest event in the publishing world in Spanish, the second on the planet. What a challenge.
Many things have happened since Barcelona, with the help of Catalonia, stood out at the Frankfurt Fair in 2007. And not all of them have been good. Among them, a loss of cultural self-esteem that leads many locals to think that cosmopolitans are always others and that any distinction that falls here - being considered a UNESCO literary city or hosting the best library in the world - is a mere prize of consolation, something that major cities would not fight over.
Now there is the opportunity to overcome complexes, to continue the work done at the 2019 Buenos Aires fair, when Barcelona successfully faced the challenge of explaining to the world that the years of the process had not turned it into a city more absorbed in politically and weakened culturally.
The challenge that the Mexican fair poses to the city is evident. As on previous occasions, it must try to achieve a very complex balance between Catalan and Spanish and between established and emerging authors.
Without forgetting the contributions of a foreign legion that throughout history has greatly enriched its literary pulse. Especially, the rich community of Latin American authors who have had and have their main desk in Barcelona.
But there are less obvious challenges that take place in the rear, in the city itself. If, as the City Council proposes, presence at the FIL serves to boost Barcelona's international projection, some projects will have to be accelerated and some actions that have been pending for too long will have to be addressed.
Because Barcelona, unlike most literary capitals, lacks museums or writers' houses open to the public that accredit its status as a city of books. Its heritage is rather intangible, starting with the global festival of Sant Jordi and continuing with its specialized festivals, such as the magnificent Kosmopolis that is being celebrated these days at the CCCB.
His literary landscapes remain, more or less respected by the wear and tear of time and urban transformation. In recent decades, guides have been published that allow you to navigate and evoke these scenarios, and an extraordinary network of libraries has been completed that adds to its community function that of promoting literature made in Barcelona.
The headquarters of the two publishing giants in Spanish/Catalan, and prestigious medium and small labels, are also still in Barcelona. The bookstore system resists, with more ups than downs. But the self-esteem necessary to build a discourse around that literary capital is lacking. A story that is proudly self-referential.
The large pending piece of equipment, the public library that will be located next to the França station and that should in some way expose Barcelona's literary heritage, is stranded waiting for a new government to budget for the start of the work. It will not be ready in 2025. Neither will the Casa de les Lletres, a project in 22@ that remains on hold for now.
Two of the great references in Barcelona's literary history, Don Quixote and Sancho's passage through the city and the Latin American boom, lack the minimum necessary signage to remain present in the city's daily life.
Cervantes' novel, in which Barcelona is the protagonist, is a victim of the misgivings it arouses in Catalan nationalism and a radical left who - often without reading it - regard it as a Spanishist and/or reactionary allegation. Nothing could be further from the truth, with the Cervantine antihero being a character sympathetic to cultural diversities and an avant la lettre libertarian.
Its passage through the city is barely signposted, nor has any of the spaces linked to the author or his work – or any other facility in the public sphere – been used to open an interpretation center of Cervantes' Barcelona.
More. While the Barcelona of the boom of García Márquez, Vargas Llosa and their colleagues remains unmarked - in this case due to disagreements between the neighbors - we should ask ourselves if the particular statue dedicated to Mercè Rodoreda in the Plaza del Diamant is, to this day today, a tribute worthy of such a universal writer. If the author of La plaça del diamant doesn't deserve more.
Also wonder why there are no signs indicating the settings of books that are so essentially Barcelona-based such as Vida Privada, by Josep Maria de Sagarra, or La Febre d'Or, by Narcís Oller. Or the routes of Marsé, Mendoza, Laforet and other contemporaries.
Signs that should be as apparent as those of the Barrio de las Letras in Madrid or those of Cervantes' Seville, although they collide with the rigid public signage criteria in force in the Barcelona urban landscape.
The intention of the current municipal team is to divert an important part of the cultural cocapitality funds to the literary ecosystem. That is, if they manage to recover, because for the program to be renewed, Pedro Sánchez's PSOE must remain in the Moncloa.
It will not be a wrong decision. Sergio Vila-Sanjuán closed his Barcelona, city of books (Libros de Vanguardia) stating, between reality and desire, that “Barcelona has made the book a hallmark” to the point that, in the city, “every day is Book Day.” And in the face of the wave of uniformity that is sweeping global cities, there is nothing more necessary than preserving the signs of identity.
Ultimately, it is a question of ambition. The necessary to avoid further leaks of editorial archives and to intensify ties with the rest of the literary cities in Spain - hence the concept of cocapitality -, with European cities and, above all, with Latin America.
Because too much time has already been lost and advantageous situations have been wasted. The trail of the boom was allowed to be lost, as if Latin America could only relate to Madrid, and harmony with other Spanish capitals was broken as a consequence of the political process.
Guadalajara is an opportunity to align efforts and reconstruct the story of a Barcelona that will be cultural or will be whatever tourism wants.
