Pedro Almodóvar's thing was going to be arriving and kissing the saint. The rest of the authors summoned for the photo of the Sant Jordi edition of La Vanguardia –fourteen in total– are already located and ready to shoot when the Oscar-winning filmmaker from La Mancha, who opens on Book Day, crosses the threshold of the Alma hotel in humble attitude. The red carpet awaits him, a girl in red and red roses, à la Women on the Brink...
“Ah, so we are Almodóvar girls”, understands Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, climbing onto the ledge of one of the windows, from where he will toast Sant Jordi and throw his book Castillos de fuego into the air. Next to her, the young Joana Marcús – the best-seller from Mallorca who this year has solved the queues by limiting them to 700 and with a previous ticket – smiles when there is silence. That's it, Almodóvar has arrived. It will be his first Sant Jordi with his second book –not a script–, this one of stories entitled El último sueño.
The experience is the closest thing to checking in. For the first time in the ten years that this festival has been taking place, the authors' set is set up not in the garden or in the restaurant, but in the hotel reception, which guests cannot use for more than half an hour. .
“It was the only virgin space”, argues Xavier Cervera, editor-in-chief of photography and creator of the image in which he introduces a Sant Jordi dragon for the first time. More than that: the photo is presided over by an authentic vibria, that animal from medieval fantastic mythology that is a viper that has undergone a transformation. This icon, which has participated in the Solemnitats of the Consell de Cent since the 14th century, has grown a dragon's head, wings and, eventually, a woman's breasts, “to make it clearer who is a symbol of malice, temptation and betrayal”.
All of this that popular culture researcher Xavier Cordomí, director of Casa dels Entremesos, later tells us, is unknown to Almodóvar when he stands in front of the fiberglass figure, undecided between taking off his sunglasses or keeping them on. "It depends on whether the flash is going to be intense." Next to him, the young Catalan actress and writer Juana Dolores welcomes him... “Without you, nothing I've done would make sense. I have come here for you”, the author of I si una nació desfilant por una catifa vermella tells her. laughs.
They are surrounded on one side by Dolores Redondo, the newly awarded Prince of Viana Award for Culture, who caresses an animal's paw and imagines a novel – “literary festivals inspire black plots, they have something of a social gathering, something sensual and something false. ..”– and also Luz Gabás, Ramón Andrés, Marcús and Pisón. On the other hand, Manuel Vilas, Camilla Läckberg, Eva Baltasar, Xavier Bosch, Luis García Montero, Andrea Genovart and Carles Porta will also raise the glass of cava as a toast.
Is Almodóvar treated better at film or literary galas? "I can't complain, but this month, promoting the book, I have felt more understood and the book specialists have asked me more interesting questions... This today is an anticipation of what is going to be a festival of books and of people who get along very well. I am so excited".
