A great dragon with a mouth full of roses, with Pedro Almodóvar and the poet and actress Juana Dolores in front, last night presided over the already traditional photography of authors of the Sant Jordi festival by La Vanguardia. An explosion of roses that for the authors and editors – and many filmmakers and politicians, including seven ministers, election year rules – gathered yesterday for the tenth year at the Alma hotel in Barcelona, perhaps today will become the metaphor not only of the return through the door great of the book festival after years at half throttle due to the pandemic and last year's hailstorm, but of what they believe will be a record Sant Jordi today, the best in history.
Daniel Fernández, president of the Federation of the Publishers Guild of Spain, summarized that it will be a three-day Sant Jordi, "Friday with the bookstores full, Saturday with streets and bookstores full and Sunday the same, the most beautiful party is going to have a very beautiful billing number”. Patrici Tixis, from Grupo Planeta, believed that from what they explained to him, the bookstores this week are headed for an absolute record, especially in a year with much more space on the streets for books.
A publishing sector that yesterday afternoon attended the La Vanguardia party in full and that crossed paths with the world of cinema, with names like Albert Serra, but above all with Pedro Almodóvar as the permanent center of all eyes, ready to sign today in Barcelona his book of stories The last dream. An Almodóvar to whom Juana Dolores declared her absolute devotion to him and who ended up talking about the London glam era of the seventies with the Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta, who encouraged him to publish more unpublished stories. "I am very modest," Almodóvar told him. "The perfect is the enemy of the good," replied an Iceta that despite the presence of half the Council of Ministers at the Alma hotel – Vice President Yolanda Díaz, Félix Bolaños, Joan Subirats, Raquel Sánchez, Irene Montero and José Manuel Albares– believes that much remains to be done. "In France, a minister who does not read does not exist," he summed up. Luckily, the great head of the Penguin Random House group, Núria Cabutí, assured that the increase in reading produced by the pandemic has not been a mirage and the many readers gained are maintained, for which she also ventured "a great Sant Jordi".
The publishing sector, authors and publishers, who were full last night at the La Vanguardia party. Sigrid Kraus, Juan Cerezo, Jorge Herralde and Silvia Sesé or Elena Ramírez at a party in which the authors were the protagonists. From the queen of Scandinavian noir Camilla Läckberg to the queen of the Baztán valley, Dolores Redondo, from Luz Gabás to Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, from Carles Porta to the director of Cervantes, Luis García Montero, Manuel Vilas, Santiago Lorenzo, Laura Ferrero, Fernando Aramburu , Julia Navarro or the hypermedia Risto Mejide and Jordi Évole.
Authors like Ray Loriga, who has come to sign in Barcelona for 31 years. “It was 1992, I came with my first novel, no one knew me and they sat me down next to Quim Monzó to sign. I didn't sign anything and since Monzó had a huge tail, I ended up opening the books for him to sign,” he says, amused. On the other hand, for Liz Duval, who publishes Melancolía, it is her third Sant Jordi but the first real one: “Last year I was going to sign at the Pròleg bookstore and when I got out of the subway it was such a storm that I had to buy other socks. When I arrived at the bookstore soaked, they made me hot tea and gave me a towel.”
At a party chaired by the editor Javier Godó in which the actress Miranda Gas read a fragment of La plaça del diamant by Mercè Rodoreda and there was a performance by Héctor Tejedo and Pau Mainé, the director of La Vanguardia, Jordi Juan, pointed out that, despite Due to the bad economic omens that were being proclaimed, we are living in a moment of joy and optimism, as the book sector especially shows, and recalled in a time of fake news, but above all of the great promise and threat of artificial intelligence, the importance of the serious press, “to know where the news that reaches us every day comes from”.
In a day attended by the mayor Ada Colau and three ministers -Natàlia Garriga, Tània Verge and Gemma Ubasart-, undoubtedly one of the funniest anecdotes of the evening was carried out by the mayor of Junts, Xavier Trias, and the second of Colau's list, the person in charge of Barcelona Culture, Jordi Martí, almost in a comic dialogue. They greeted each other amused and Trias said that they had a poll that gave him a winner and that he noticed great support on the street. Martí replied that they were winning in the polls and he added that in any case he was very happy to have him in the Consistory, that they would have a lot of fun. “As mayor, of course,” Trias told him. "As head of the opposition," Martí laughed at him. "You won't see me there," the former mayor replied, pointing out that he would make little sense at 76 years of age. In the animated conversation someone intervened that Biden is going to present himself with 82. "It is not my intention to become a histrionic character," Trias laughed. In just over a month we will meet the mayor of the next Sant Jordi festival.
