“We want to explain said Commissioner Anna Guitart in the presentation of the invited city program to the FIL of Guadalajara in the Saló de Cent de Barcelona last June. The police station has insisted whenever it can in that fixation:“ That does not mean that we do not recognize the past, we will also honor key figures that will serve to talk about such transcendent issues as the boom or exile. “But the motto of the program,” Vindran Les Flors “, speaks of cycle and regeneration: Barcelona wants to appear to Mexico with a new face.
The Catalan delegation presented this Monday at the Paraninfo of the University of Guadalajara the program with which Xavier Marcé, Councilor for Culture and Creative Industries of the Barcelona City Council, has affirmed that the participation of Catalan – which has called “the unprotected language of political reality” – at the most important book of the books of America “was culturally obliged”. And then, he stressed: “And politically legitimate and has been fortunately.” Marcé recalled that “Barcelona and Catalonia lead the Spanish editorial sector” and that the proposal that lands in Mexico includes consolidated names “of authors of long and solid career and indisputable and recognized quality”, but has noted that to elaborate the list of the participants “we have worked with special interest the potential of new authorships.”
The election of the 70s chosen between November 29 and December 7 has not passed without controversy. The most popular has been the author of the superventas The Cathedral of the Sea, Published in 2006, which claims to have been excluded for “political reasons” and that in the list there are “little known writers.” Others have missed writers such as O, and in other sectors an excessive presence of authors in Spanish or commercial writers has been criticized.
“I don’t think you can define the literature in a single form and that is why I wanted to explain to Guadalajara who we are now,” said Guitart in Barcelona. News and plurality, then, are the main objectives in the construction of a list that aims to represent all possible, sometimes contradictory definitions, of what is the literature of and on Barcelona. In addition to this will, the selection has two more conditions: none of the writers who went to the fair last year with the Spanish delegation (which broke records with almost 300 participants) have not been invited and the writers in Catalan must have the work translated into Spanish. It is for that reason that during the last year new translations have been promoted and funded by the Institute Ramon Llull.
Marcé has responded to criticism about authors who have been left out of the official list and has given a boost to the curator of the Catalan delegation, who, he said, “has all the accurate author’s freedom.” He recalled that publishers have also made their proposals. “Barcelona is not here with a single list that makes the city, but is a set of interests, in which they come together what we are going to promote and what the editorials historically present in Guadalajara must decide,” he said.
The guest writers
In the final list of the Barcelona delegation, presented in Guadalajara with some changes with respect to the one disclosed in Barcelona a few months ago, writers consecrated with debutants, Spanish and Catalan coexist, and a plurality of literary genres and styles, of the black novel to the essay, children’s literature or poetry.
The delegation will travel to Mexico headed by Eduardo Mendoza, which will open the fair. Together with him, authors with international projection as literature in Spanish, which will also include the generation of Barcelona formed by Kiko Amat, Carlos Zanón or Miqui Otero, or Latin American authors based in the city, such as Paulina Flores or Jordi Soler, who will participate with the Victoria Szpunberg dramatage in a round table organized by the country. The Irishman Colm Tóibín, who will accompany the delegation, was also Barcelona. And there will be more academics such as Rafael Argullol or Victoria Circus.
Among the authors in Catalan, the will to present current popular literature stands out, combining superventas with writers of less trajectory or scope, which the Mexican reader will probably discover at the fair. Among recent commercial successes, Xavier Bosch and Regina Rodríguez stand out. Marta Orriols, Gemma Ruiz, Oriol Canosa or Màrius Serra also have a large audience among Catalan readers.
They will be accompanied by authors with few published books or less massive sales, but with recognition between booksellers or criticism, such as Irene Pujadas, Ferran Garcia or Eduard Olesti in fiction, Anna Pazos in non-fiction and Adrià Targa, Mireia Calafell or the controversial Juana Dolores in poetry. Among the writers with consolidated and recognized trajectories, Mercè Ibarz, Carme Riera (which he has published in Catalan and Spanish), Miquel de Palol or Vicenç Altaió.
