One million, they sang one million euros

BarcelonaIf the t-shirt that patron Sergi Ferrer-Salat wore last year to the Finestres awards ceremony said "tax the rich", the one worn this year by Estefania Rico, director of the Ferrer Foundations, said"Silence is complicity"You will never hear at any other cultural event, much less one funded by a pharmaceutical company, that 'privileged elites unmoved by suffering' are singled out and that the 'redistribution of wealth to society' is defended in such a radical way." Rico says that 50% of Ferrer Internacional's net profits, everything that doesn't go to social, sports, and food programs, amount to 20 million euros each year. He reminds us that a new Finestres Palestina bookstore will open in Gràcia. Pema Maymó, David Fernández, Marta Salicrú, Anna Guitart... We are at the Liceu Conservatory, a foundation also chaired by Ferrer-Salat, who also has a music foundation that awards scholarships to students, some of whom will be performing today. The Finestres awards are the most lucrative for published work, with a prize of 25,000 euros. (comic book) Creamed gums, by Natalia Velarde (Reservoir Books), and in children's or young adult comics, Super potato against nanomalice, ofArtur Laperla (Bang Editions). Irene Pujadas wins the Ventanas prize for narrative in Catalan for The intruder (L'Otra), ahead of the novels by Jordi Lara and Toni Sala. Silvana Vogt has won the prize in Spanish for The fine art of creating monsters (H&O). "I'm 56 years old and now I know what I want to be when I grow up," she says upon receiving it. Until now, she hadn't dared to call herself a writer; Vogt was the bookseller at Cal Llibreter in Sant Just. Curiously, she began publishing in Catalan: "Exile was very hard, and I chose, more than a country, to stop speaking my language," she recalls. "After 23 years here, I've reconciled with my country. Poor Argentina, I forgive you!" Irene Pujadas—whom I see suffering when I approach to speak with her parents, who aren't coming through the door today—is happy "that the nonsense I'd been writing alone at home has found readers" and tells me that the Finestres check gives her "peace of mind and time."

The other important award of the evening is the Ventanas Comic Award for unpublished work, which has gone to the leading figure in comics queer Sebas Martín, with a thriller police work that moves between two centuries: between the group queer from the early 20th-century circles of Els Refinats (Ismael Smith and company) and a serial killer who currently murders using literary prizes. The image of a literary prize crushing publishers makes me think of the bombshell that Aena dropped yesterday on the publishing sectorA new prize in Spanish, with a Hispanic American scope, has been launched for the best work published during the year, endowed with one million euros. They've announced a million.

As if the waters weren't already stirred up enough with the new Catalan Literature NightAena's announcement has caused quite a stir in the industry, where it seems distant and unreal as they savor incredible canapés—even though Catalan writers are eligible... if their work has been translated into Spanish. "It's huge. One million. I wonder who came up with this idea, do you know?" the publisher Jordi Rourera asks me. "Yesterday I read that Aena has earned more than 2 billion euros net." In other words, the prize is 0.1% of its profits. Some people ask the ChatGPT if Aena is a public company (the answer: mostly yes), so it's quite a prize. that we all say to each other.

After the Barcelona City Council's literary grant for Latin American authors, after the Goya Awards ceremony in Barcelona and even the announcement of the film by Quotes The Aena Prize, presented in Spanish and centered around Sant Jordi's Day, will arrive on April 8th. "It's absurd. The disproportion is unbelievable," says literary critic Marina Espasa. "And to present it in Barcelona before Sant Jordi: it wasn't necessary."