A few days ago, the excellent editor of L'Avenç, Núria Iceta, recalled the book sales figures for last year's Sant Jordi. Citing sources from the Gremi de Llibreters de Catalunya (the entity that forces bookstores to offer discounts during the Diada, a commercial policy as wise as if the Guild of Fishmongers decided to reduce the price of prawns at Christmas), Iceta recalled that, among the 1,870,000 copies sold, there were up to 60,000 different titles. In turn, the editor continued, this implies that the best-seller lists only account for approximately 6% of the total copies; this data is essential, especially now that cultural supplements, digital media, and various newspapers are already sprinting to publish the list of Sant Jordi's best sellers (a curious choice that, as we know, is manufactured before the Diada...).
In other words, it is evident that most of the country's media focus their attention on an infinitesimal part of the bulk of Catalan literature written (and read!) in the country, a series of books that – with very honorable exceptions – are fast books of which no damn soul will speak next year. In parallel, the anxiety for rankings offers us a tremendously partial view of the richness of genres in Catalan literature; focusing on the novel (supposedly aimed at adults), essays, children's and young adult literature, poetry, or, who knows if the fiercest victim of this Darwinism, theater, are continuously neglected. It must also be said that this discrepancy between mercantilism and the actual purchase of books demonstrates, and this is not bad news, that the cultural omnipotence of traditional media is on the decline.
In this thing called cultural journalism, something curious happens, and that is that the chronicles of the bestsellers of Sant Jordi, I dare to insist, are written weeks before the event (it is difficult for me to imagine a war correspondent inventing Iran's attack on Israel ten days ago) and the race for the bestseller can reach laughable limits like last year's, when the title was disputed between Gemma Ruiz and Xavier Bosch, like that time when La La Land won the Oscar for best picture for a few brief seconds of glory. I recommend to readers – uselessly, because the Diada is an eternal return of the same – that they forget about the lists and try to walk through the cities and towns of the country (dodging the celebrities who sign books written by others; we used to call them ghostwriters, but now it sounds very racist) to find a good bookseller who will give them a book to read, and the more unknown it is, the better the discovery will be.
In fact, this is the custom of most readers in the country, who are much more sovereign than people think; this explains how, last year, the best-selling book sold little more than thirteen thousand copies, a notoriously low figure (especially if we take into account the money that publishers spend on advertising and media dissemination). There are, therefore, many volumes from publishers committed to literature that do not reach these numbers, but which – in an equation based on the quality of the text and the often resource-poor craftsmanship of their editors – achieve even greater success. I will not be the one to make lists or recommend a book, as this has always seemed vulgar to us at home. Recently, El País's Quadern did it with the best Catalan books of the last fifty years, placing Permagel or Jaume Cabré before El Canvi and Palacios. Anyway.
The Diada has always seemed to me something very Catalan, directly paranormal, because one has to be very eccentric to celebrate the commerce of a product (the book is one, no matter how much it weighs on romantics) whose sustainability practically depends on twenty-four hours of consumption. But, having said that, let everyone enjoy it as they wish and can: preferably, beyond the fast food of six percent.