The Professional Football League chaired by Javier Tebas, this man who has the sensitivity of a porcupine, since in the face of any problem he takes the shape of a ball, has decided that the match between Barcelona and Atlético will be played at 4.15pm Sant Jordi's day, when Catalans take to the streets on this day to celebrate the great book festival. And roses. It is not something new, since it has been celebrated in Barcelona for almost a century.
The Ministry of Culture and the Barcelona City Council have approached Barça to ask for a change in the established schedule. Booksellers fear that the party will empty the book stalls in the afternoon and fill the streets to overflowing in the morning and late in the day. The authorities have stated that the imposed schedule will create mobility and security problems. But, in addition, booksellers know that almost a third of the books bought in Catalonia are sold on Sant Jordi, so distorting the day with a high-interest football match, after lunch on the 23rd, seems a decision made out of ignorance or bad faith. It is not clear which is worse. However, the club's petition to the League has been of no avail. Everyone has their own sensitivity. There are things that are not inherited.
The ill-fated Javier Marías, who was as much a Madrid fan as Javier Tebas, would have been horrified by this obstinacy. It was he who wrote that "Barcelona is the only Spanish city that seems to take its own traditions, its own festivals and its own customs seriously and without sarcasm: the inhabitants buy a rose or a book on the day of Sant Jordi or they eat coke on St. John's night because they still think it's a good idea and even if no one but them has to know what they're doing, and not for parody or exhibitionism or deliberate folklore, as happens almost everywhere today in this kind of celebrations that are from the past".
We cannot underestimate football, especially since Albert Camus, who was a player, said that it was a school of life and morals learned spontaneously. But he would never have kicked the book instead of a ball, as the insensitive man of the League ended up doing.
