Catalonia returned to experiencing a massive Sant Jordi yesterday, "with an increase in sales" which, pending confirmation in a few days, would mean having broken its absolute sales record. The weather respected the party, beyond four drops at noon, and there were many who went out into the streets from the early hours to experience a day "that seems to have not been celebrated for years, due to the amount of people that has come to visit the authors. I remember it more intensely than other years", said Javier Castillo, the best-selling author of fiction in Spanish for his book La grieta del silencio (Suma).
The writer found out about the good news through La Vanguardia, since when the Book Chamber published the trend list of the best-selling books, the Malaga native was still at his stand, with a long queue of readers waiting to know l. "In theory, it ended at 9 p.m., but I know that I will stay until midnight, like last year. I don't want anyone to be left without their signature. I have already used up seven pens and I have three left. But not even the lack of ink, if that happened, will stop me." Castillo was accompanied for a good part of the day by the editors from the United Kingdom, "so that they know first hand what we call the Castillo phenomenon, which not only persists over time, but grows and finds no limit", points out the its editor, Gonzalo Albert, who remembers that the author "was the first Spanish writer to star on a screen in Times Square".
Ramon Gener was also in the middle of signing when he learned that he topped the Chamber's list of fiction in Catalan with his Història d'un piano (Columna): "I didn't expect it at all, I just wanted to write a story with taste and love and it was wonderful to be able to share it with the readers on a day like today". "I tried to give time to each reader who came so that they could tell me their story and be able to give them a very special dedication", explained the writer, who with the book has made his debut in the fictional narrative, and this is how he discovered that "it turns out that half of Catalonia plays the piano, and if that wasn't the case they would tell me anecdotes about other instruments or from music". But Gener didn't need to have this literary success to insist on the fictional narrative: "I've been writing about it for days". Now you can find the moment.
Although everything indicates that there will be few changes, we will have to wait until April 29 to know with complete certainty which have been the best-selling books on Sant Jordi, if they are these or perhaps the titles by Xavi Coral ( Learn to dodge bullets, La Campana) or Eva Baltasar (Ocàs i fascinació, Club Editor), in Catalan, or that of Eduardo Mendoza (Tres enigmas para la Organización, Seix Barral) or the posthumous work of Gabriel García Márquez (En agosto nos vemos, Random House), in Spanish, although trends in both languages also include Joël Dicker's latest novel ( Un animal salvatje , La Campana/Alfaguara) or the first installment of Blackwater by Michael McDowell ( La riuada , Blackie Books).
A few days ago, the president of the Booksellers Guild, Éric del Arco, said that this year the list would not be final and would indicate the trend that has been seen in recent days, but not the final data. Yesterday, without going into details, the feeling of some publishers on the street pointed to an increase in sales taking into account the previous days, precisely because since it has been a weekday - for the first time since before the pandemic - some readers shopping progressed. Some editor ventured, without figures at hand, to talk about 7%, and another even 20% in general terms.
This has been one of the most participatory Sant Jordi that can be remembered in Barcelona and with the largest number of stalls, from 186 in 2017 to 435 this year: 3,356 meters of registered street bookstores. It has also been the first year that bookstores and publishers have paid to have a stand in the "professional areas" of Barcelona, a co-payment measure that Del Arco assured at the time that "it is here to stay".
Yesterday, whether in professional areas or not, readers filled the streets. Perhaps in the early hours the crowd was not as high as in other years that it fell on a holiday, but in the afternoon, and especially as people left work, it became very difficult to even walk around some passing streets. The power of the book does not always win.
