The Catalan Wikipedia ---and common wisdom--- believe that Aena "is a Spanish public company, constituted as a limited company, which manages airports of general interest in Spain." Definitions and wikidictionaries are loaded by the devil, because even the most anodyne phrases hide dark intentions; in this particular case, the expression "general interest," a soft euphemism to remind us that Spaniards are usually more interested in the Barajas-Adolfo Suárez airport than in the rest of the peripheral infrastructures (we Barcelonans know this, as we suffer the delay of the expansion of El Prat-Tarradellas, designed to cram us with much more tourism and not to connect us with the most awake cities in the world). Be that as it may, our Wikipedian friends should add to the page in question that, from now on, Aena will also act as a literary influencer.
As faithful readers of our Post will know, the airport company (presided over by a Catalan of these plurinational and socialist types who gets rich in Madrit, Maurici Lucena) surprised everyone by announcing the creation of a literary prize whose only interest is that it is awarded to a published work, with a prize of one million euros (thus matching the Planeta prize but not surpassing it, lest the literary bosses of Barcelona get angry with us!). To make things a little less Castilian-centric, its organizers said that books in Catalan, Galician, or Basque could also compete... as long as they were translated into Spanish, the "language that unites us" and, of course, the awarded language. It was won by an Argentine lady whom we will not read (we already have enough patience with the porteño bartenders) and who will not have any lasting cultural impact on our very awake city.
Despite having finalists like the Nobel-worthy Vila-Matas (a man too much our own, who even speaks Catalan!), it is logical that Aena's jury of socialist literati wanted to offer so much money to a South American author, given our City Council's taste for tying Barcelona to the world formerly colonized by the Spanish. This was already certified by that invention called Narrar Barcelona, which shook the past Guadalajara Book Fair, a scholarship of 80,000 bucks concocted for a Latin American author to spend a few months inspiring himself in our capital, in case he decides to write a novel or a story about the patatas bravas at Bar Delicias. All of this has a certain irony, because if the interest of the capital's PSC is for the city to end up becoming a kind of vulgar colony with envy issues towards kilometer zero or a cultural replica of Miami with Caribbean airs, this cultural policy is the most suitable.
I understand that most of my fellow Catalan-language literati are indignant about all this display of Castilianizing provincialism. In fact, it is hard to digest that a company with 51% public participation ---which, as I said before, should ensure airport health--- spends our money organizing lavish events of no interest that tie Barcelona to the paradigm of a province. I also understand most of the long-suffering novelists of the tribe, who must hide the liters of saliva they swallow before awards with figures impossible to reach in Catalan. But I recommend that they not be intimidated; if socialism needs these trifles to impose Spanish nationalism on us and must afluixar la mosca to organize parties without any cultural impact (something like the beret of this poor ass who dirties Rodoreda, this David Uclés) it means that we are still alive.
So, although the joke costs us a lot of money, let's celebrate this new condition of Aena's literary influencer, because it's always very funny to see how the enemy dedicates itself to making a fool of itself and failing in the attempt to make us more vulgar. They will not get away with it, no matter how much they stuff us with Argentinism and want to fix our airport to bring all the rubbish from Europe home. We will resist, of course, because perhaps we don't have as much money, but literature and the city are still ours.