St. George's Day is a continuum of "low-voltage, five-to-ten-volt satisfactions," as journalism's Tom Wolfe wrote. For the authors, because they see the faces of their readers and for the readers, because they take their signature with them. And above all, it is an almost century-old festival in which the Catalans, tired of celebrating defeats, decided one day to commemorate the victory of culture. It is no coincidence that on this day more books are sold in Catalan than in Spanish, something that does not happen the rest of the year, as if a majority wanted to affirm their identity.
For a decade, the party starts the evening before, at the Alma hotel, where La Vanguardia gathers the writers who, hours later, will be deployed around Barcelona like a faithful literary infantry. I must say that I arrived at the event at the same time as Ada Colau and Yolanda Díaz, whom I greeted affectionately. The second vice-president of the Government wore an elegant black Manila shawl. A very appropriate piece, which was glossed by Benito Pérez Galdós in Fortunata y Jacinta, in which he defined it as "a beautiful and characteristic shawl that so favors beauty, at the same time stately and popular, since it has taken it to the shoulders of the great lady and the gypsy". Well, because of those random things, the fringes of the shawl got tangled with the button of my jacket and we experienced a few moments of crisis, since one more burst could end in tragedy. I didn't lose my cool, I endured a failed attempt by the lady to solve the mess, and with the skill of a surgeon, achieved after a few seconds of nerves, I untied the knot.
But it was not a harbinger of anything. Sant Jordi's Day was later in the day, due to the fact that it was a holiday, but before noon Barcelona was bustling, with citizens laden with books and roses, enjoying a spring day. For a moment I had the hope that the world was ruled by books, a slogan that, by the way, was in the window of the Catalan bookstore during the years of the Second Republic.
I signed a few copies of my book Historias de la canallesca, a small tribute to a profession, journalism, that I love deeply, and I went home satisfied, remembering Jack Lang's praise of the Catalan capital a day like this: "Barcelona is a city for free spirits and adventurous hearts".
