The pollen of Sant Jordi

On the occasion of Sant Jordi, Barcelona booksellers usually insist ad nauseam (and with all the reason in the world) that we should pay little attention to the best-seller lists, as they only represent five percent of the total volumes that pass through the register and, supposedly, that the public will end up reading. This constant data is the first good news of each Diada, because it shows that all the propaganda apparatus of the media (too often, mere publicists of their own authors) and of the large publishing groups has less and less impact on the course of conscientious readers. However, this year the rankings have given us a good photo: in the sector of our language, the tribe has once again certified its bad taste by buying the text of an absurd lady famous for her hats and, in the field of light essay, has done something as typical as curing its conscience by buying a plaquette on how to defend Catalan (I'm sure Òscar's is great, but I'm terribly lazy to read it).

On the other hand, as far as the enemy language camp is concerned, we must admit the triumph as a most just victor of the Barcelona writer Eduardo Mendoza. I write that his victory is totally deserved because I have no problem subsuming literature into the universe of marketing and, with his prototypical comments of the progressive-culturet Falangism of our city (Mendoza would have wanted the dragon to kill Sant Jordi to mutate the festival into Book Day, a very Primo de Rivera reinvention), the novelist has managed to let the Castilians of Barcelona know that he is still alive. Despite having said that he would retire a long time ago, because he had already said everything, Mendoza has signed many books; and the thing is hopeful, I would dare to insist, because if Spanish culture ---to survive in the country's capital--- is forced to parade these mummies of socialist Olympism... it means that the cultural struggle is more won than it seems. Now all that remains is for us to exchange popcorn for good books and thus we will have the army in order.

The thing about rankings would also tell us about two Catalonias: the almost ours, which entertains itself with the popcorn of absurd literature and cultural resistance and, on the other hand, that of the Spaniards who strive to return us to the exile of 90s folklorism, now solely sustained by the mandarins who, in those Cobi times, to buy an apartment in London, it was enough for them to mock the Moreneta and the castellers. Fortunately, the regression to the past is not always the same and the country has advanced a lot in the face of such a horrifying dichotomy: to give an example, also from the book world, although yesterday I walked very little around the city, I noticed that readers continue to support the fabric of independent publishers, most of which are based in Barcelona (although what the cheapskates define as "the territory" is not giving examples of healthy competition, with fantastic islets like the publishers Fonoll, Sidillà, Quid pro Quo, Ela Geminada, Veles i Vents... and so many that I leave unmentioned!).

This survival of the independent cultural fabric, woven by our publishers over the last decade, has led to an unprecedented flourishing of good autochthonous books and, I would bet anything, some of the best batches of translators in our entire history. But I would also say that the work of these publishers is in danger; first, as has been shown in the case of Periscopi ---now integrated into Grup62 of the Planeta publishing house---, because publishers will not be able to continue maintaining their current workforce based on subsidies, potentially ending up sucked in by large groups.

Secondly, I would also say that the qualitative leap of the last decade runs the risk of becoming stagnant in a narrative increasingly focused on book therapy (that is; the art of authors who confuse literature with going to a psychologist) and too often focused on small stories, a metaphor for a country that has softened after the procés soufflé. In a way, all the publishers that were born from the joy of 2017 now seem eaten away by discouragement.

Of all this, the citizen nature wisely realized that, far from the storms of the past (too costly for the book sector), decided to smear our streets with pollen, confirming that the triumph of factions would be slightly tarnished, an imperfect carpet, leaving books with an evident excess of mucus and turning readers' faces into a grimace of pain, with the very noble objective of avoiding a sneeze and its consequent embarrassment. For the moment, traditional trenches are trading low, but also, I insist, the world of independent books has reached a ceiling that demands reconsiderations, less gigantic and more singular catalogs, and a distribution system that honors the 21st century. I know today's Punyalada is somewhat nebulous, too overflowing with metaphors, but whoever wants to understand me will, and your wise man is also affected by the dreadful dust sacs of phanerogamous plants. Luckily, it's all over, and now we will abandon our hats and can return to books...