Between books and roses, Sant Jordi will also be a day of demands and political controversy. The Joventut Nacionalista de Catalunya (JNC, the youth of Junts) is preparing a street-level campaign to demand (one of the greatest recognitions that a person can receive from the Generalitat of Catalonia) the writer Eduardo Mendoza. On April 23, the post-convergent youth will distribute up to 7,000 leaflets in the more than 40 tents distributed throughout Catalonia as a protest against Mendoza’s postulates, which, something they consider would reduce the political burden of the day.
During the presentation of his new novel, The intrigue of the inconvenient funeral (Seix Barral), the Barcelona author defended changing the name of the Diada, considering that the figure of the saint—patron saint of Catalonia—“has nothing to do with books or writers.” “It doesn’t matter at all. Sant Jordi was an animal abuser and surely didn’t know how to read. It has nothing to do with books,” he said during the presentation of the novel, which tops the lists of best-selling narrative books in Spanish in Catalonia. His words outraged part of the Catalan independence movement, which has mobilized digitally to demand Sant Jordi, a festival especially rooted inside and outside the nationalist sphere. “Sant Jordi is not touched. It is the day where Catalonia also explains itself to the world: books, language and country,” he added in X deputy Anna Navarro, Puigdemont’s number two in the last elections. Senator Eduard Pujol (Junts) also attacked on the social network against the meaning of Mendoza’s words and against the sectors that support the writer. “They are bad people, and cowards. And now they see themselves emboldened by the tripartite.” Puigdemont himself also spoke of “revenge of resentful people” to refer to Mendoza’s words. In extremist and in many cases anonymous profiles on social networks there is also a call to burn the author’s books taking advantage of the San Juan bonfires.
Now the JNC intends to carry out the boycott. The entity urges citizens to directly ask the Government to withdraw the Creu de Sant Jordi granted to the writer in 1995. “His statements against the Day of Sant Jordi, which represents one of the emblems of Catalanness, do not make him worthy of continuing to hold such recognition,” he claims. The leaflets that he intends to distribute on Thursday explain step by step how to make the request to the Catalan Executive. They even propose a joint issue: “Petition to withdraw the Creu de Sant Jordi from Eduardo Mendoza.” Also the anonymous Segell Fosc, in Catalonia, has started a campaign on Change.org with the same objective that exceeds 6,500 requests. Contacted by EL PAÍS, the Department of Culture of the Generalitat “rejects” Mendoza’s proposals, but understands that they are framed within “freedom of expression.”
Neither Eduardo Mendoza nor the publisher have wanted to respond to the criticism of recent days, “because all noise contributes to generating a climate in which no one feels comfortable,” they say. However, the writer did address the conflict in an interview promoting his new novel for The Newspaper: “It was a joke! Because it seems that Sant Jordi is the patron saint of book sales, of writers and readers, but he is an intruder. He has gotten in there. It was Book Day because it was the death of Shakespeare and Cervantes. But come on, I don’t care about Sant Jordi.”
Different approaches
Since the controversy broke out, personalities from the literary sector have spoken out about it with different approaches. The writer Ignacio Martínez de Pisón considers the reaction surprising, taking into account that “Mendoza is a person that everyone likes.” He considers that his statements must be interpreted as a “trait of wit and humor,” and that the reaction is “an ember of the Procés” that “has taken the statements too seriously.” The writer Carlota Gurt also affirms that Book Day “is not only the Day of the book, but also of the rose and lovers,” and changing the name would hide it. Furthermore, he considers that the proposal “aspires to denationalize the day” and that “it does not link with the harmony that is supposedly desired.”
Other voices deny that Sant Jordi’s day has nothing to do historically with the sale of books, as can be seen from Mendoza’s statements. As Marçal Font-Espí, the former president of the old book guild and owner of the Fénix bookstore, explains, based on the archive of his collection, when in the 14th century the relics of Sant Jordi, patron saint of Catalonia, were moved to the Palau de la Generalitat, fairs were held coinciding with the festival, where toys, fruits and also flowers and books were sold. At that fair, the book gained prominence during the second half of the 19th century, consolidating itself as a day of literature during the Renaixença. Since 1926, the body that united the book chambers under the mandate of Primo de Rivera devised the Spanish Book Day festival, which was initially celebrated in October, coinciding with the birth of Cervantes: “It was an institutional festival, nowhere was that festival associated with a book fair, only in Catalonia,” explains Font-Espí. In 1930, with the fall of Primo de Rivera, the festival was changed to April 23, a date close to the writer’s death, merging the two festivals.
