Twenty Years with LaBreu

Nostalgia is always a mistake, and just as I arrive at the celebration of LaBreu's twentieth anniversary, I quickly realize that we are no longer where we were, and by this I mean that we are no longer in the place I always associated with this wonderful publishing house and the poetic recitals of its authors (L'Horiginal bar on Ferlandina street number 29), a wonderful den that the city's real estate greed and blah blah blah evicted, thus leaving lost a few generations of our best scribblers. But well, the important thing is that the recitals have continued their course ---now at Deskomunal in the Sants neighborhood, very well organized by the poets Maria Sevilla, Laia Carbonell, and Raquel Santanera--- and as soon as I burst into the place, I immediately feel at home, with the molthonorable Enric Casasses protecting himself with his mythical basket and my dear princess Blanca Llum Vidal remembering how much has happened since she wrote La punyetera flor. I keep telling everyone to relax, that years have passed and we have a lot of wear and tear in our skeletons, but that we are all perfectly fine.

Some things don't change, and at poetry recitals there always has to be a lot of people in an agonizingly limited space (making it difficult to get to the beer trough), the microphone can't work perfectly, sooner or later someone has to appear playing the everlasting fucking guitar… and may it all be for many years. Well, let's get to the point and make the words of the poet Marc Romera (founding father of LaBreu, along with Esther Andorrà, a first consulate to which Ignasi Pàmies, Teresa Florit, and Bernat Reher have now happily joined) our own: it would be impossible to gloss Catalan poetry of the last twenty years, nor Catalan literature of our time, without the catalog of LaBreu's Alabatre collection. We are not where we were, indeed, but today I can still hear the first three swords of this splendid collection recite again: Jordi Vintró (Cartes de sotamà), Andreu Subirats (L'ull entorn) and my contemporary Josep Pedrals (El furgatori) who, through sweat and Herculean tenacity, has become one of the best reciters on the planet.

The organizers of this poetic orgy played a dirty trick on us and, while the list of authors parades across the stage, we can admire a collection of widely projected photographs where we can see master Francesc Garriga ---how I miss you, fatso!--- and some approximate version of ourselves, with a now idiotic youth. I try not to look at the snapshots and thus I can concentrate on the masterful verses of Antoni Clapés or laugh again with the guttural joy of Josep Ramon Roig, surviving captain of the Parnasso Tortosí; also ---why deny it--- I get emotional with the kneeling songs of Martí Sales and the somewhat trembling memory of Eduard Escoffet (what a harvest of minds, that of 1979!). As the poets pass by (it's been many years of playing hooky, and I've missed the verses of Anna Enrich, Núria Mirabet and so many other magnificent writers), I praise to myself the infinite contemporaneity of this endeavor, which moved us away from the horrifying sugar of martipolismo-margaritismo, also leading the explosion of oral literature and independent publishing houses that would mark the rebirth of our great letter.

Twenty years later, LaBreu continues to set the poetic course of the country, and its collections Cicuta and La instrusa have become a prose oasis of the highest quality (I write this while leafing through a copy of Ferit de mort, the book by Raffaele La Capria that makes up the fiftieth number of the second). For me, the intrusiveness is closely linked to the recovery of the work of Sergei Dovlátov (alter ego of a Catalan author named Miquel Cabal) and also that of Anaïs Nin, which in Catalonia we all read with a ponent tonality, thanks to the beautiful amazon Nú Miret. All this will continue for ever and ever, although the role of independent publishers has also reached a certain collapse (this deserves a separate article), and this is how I hope to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the publishing house soon. I would like to celebrate it in a somewhat larger auditorium, with a bar service that includes cocktails and sound amplification that is somewhat more effective. I yearn in vain, I think as I leave Deskomunal, because here we always do things apologizing a little.

We are no longer where we were, because it's barely eleven at night... and here I am, making my exit and catching the subway to go home. Per molts anys, senyors i senyores de LaBreu!