If someone wanted to film a documentary about the preparations for Sant Jordi in Barcelona, they could resort to alternate editing, a resource invented by the filmmaker D.W. Griffith more than a century ago. He could alternate shots of bookstore staff opening the last boxes served by distributors; of the florists wrapping the roses; of the Urban Guard shielding the book superblock with fences; of the publishers' communities flooding the network with literary advertising, or of some reader (he, more of an essay, she, with a love for the novel) taking the last look at the special editorial news that their newspaper published on Saturday trust.
And then, of course, there are the parties that are celebrated between the 22nd and 23rd in different spaces in the city, like the one that La Vanguardia has offered to the publishing sector at the Alma hotel since 2014. In fact, parties like this could appear also in that alternate montage, but its protagonists are not as relevant as all those mentioned above if we focus on Sant Jordi of the current year. Because editors, distributors and agents now have little to do: their work from the previous months or years is now available to the public at the stops. Reading is served. As for writers, if they are not bestsellers or in the media, they know that appearing today at stops is a mere test of self-esteem (the author next door always tends to sign more books), very bearable, of course, since it has existed. the mobile phone to pretend to be busy while waiting in vain for a reader to approach.
But in parties like yesterday's at Alma, in addition to fun, there is also work, a lot of work that will bear fruit on Sant Jordi in 2025. Of those relaxed conversations between an author and an editor, between a writer and a literary agent , books will emerge that will fill the stalls for years to come. Whether or not there is someone interested in having them signed.
