It is not common for a city to host a major international book fair. It can do so as the capital of a State or as a symbolic reference for a national industry, but rarely does it do so with its own personality and with the sufficiency to represent a unique editorial and literary reality. Barcelona has this privilege, which began at the end of the 15th century with the arrival of the first printing presses and continues to this day with a broad sector that brings together a multitude of publishers, libraries, bookstores, and of course, the entire range of creators who provide its content.
Barcelona is a literary city because complete generations of publishers have made it an ideal place to write and publish, which is why it is a UNESCO literary capital, which is why it has one of the best library networks in Europe, and which is why it has brought together authors from all over the world to create their works in an environment of complicity and creative fertility.
It is also for this reason that it has been so easy and evident to come to Guadalajara to headline the most important Spanish-language Book Fair in the world, a year after this privilege was granted to Spain. It might seem curious, even redundant, that, being the city that hosts most of the Spanish publishing spectrum, this coincidence has occurred. In reality, Barcelona's presence as a guest city is nothing more than the mature and forceful manifestation of the Spanish publishing weight made from Catalonia and, above all, despite some, of its cultural and linguistic diversity. For this reason, to make it even more evident, it makes perfect sense to go to Guadalajara a year after Spain.
A relevant part of our selection of authors originally writes in Catalan, and we have translated them with the conviction that their quality will be appreciated in all its magnitude. It was Umberto Eco who said that the language of the book is translation, and we refer to this when we want to highlight a whole new generation of writers. It is a determined commitment that aims to overcome clichés and normalize a consolidated cultural reality that does not always receive the attention it deserves.
60 authors in all areas of literary creation travel to Guadalajara. Well-known and established authors such as Eduardo Mendoza, Javier Cercas, Vazquez Sallés, Xavier Bosch, Sergio Vila Sanjuan, Carme Riera or Juan Pablo Villalobos (Mexican established in Barcelona) accompanied by Adrià Pujol, Maria Carme Roca, Irene Pujadas, Gemma Ruiz, Kiko Amat, Clara Usón, Màrius Serra, Mireia Calafell or Carlota Gurt. These are some of the names that will be in Guadalajara, neither the only ones nor the most important, because a Fair, and especially this one, is above all a stage for new opportunities.
Of course, in Guadalajara we will explain more things. It is an excellent setting to present our cultural reality, the extraordinary diversity of our scenic and musical panorama with proposals as relevant as those of Love of Lesbian, Tarta Relena or Maria Arnal, La Veronal or the theater of Josep Maria Miró, a cinema that accumulates awards in major festivals or exhibitions that reflect the validity of sectors such as design or social analysis in Barcelona. We will also share reflections in the fields of science and thought, to which the fair dedicates an important role.
Publishers, editors, bookstores, libraries, authors and popularizers, translators, illustrators, literary journalists, printers, distributors, book and reading activists must be celebrating. As happens every year on Sant Jordi, when we experience an irrational idyll with the book and the rose in an authentic catharsis, Barcelona will explain itself in Latin America as a city in love with books and culture, and this feeling will not be a calculated will to take advantage of everything that a great global event brings us, but the genuine expression of a history and a reality.