Joan Margarit and the "astonishing ease in cultivating friendship"

MadridIt was a few minutes before seven in the evening, and about ten people were queuing outside number 4 Barquillo Street in Madrid, where one of the entrances to the Cervantes Institute is located. They waited impatiently, yet confidently, to enter the tribute in memory of the poet Joan Margarit, now five years after his death. In the room that hosted the event, only a few chairs reserved for the press remained empty. "Joan had an astonishing knack for cultivating friendships," said the master of ceremonies, journalist and family friend Pepa Fernández. This sentiment was echoed throughout the tribute by the other figures from the world of culture and literature who contributed their own words, beginning with the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luís García Montero.

Lights illuminating only the stage, leaving the audience in darkness, marked the start of an event steeped in solemnity. Above the stage, a screen displayed an image of Margarit and the text "So that five years may pass," a reference to Federico García Lorca's play, serving as a reminder of the five-year anniversary of the loss of one of the great names in Catalan poetry, though he remains in our memory, as the event emphasized. "[Joan Margarit] said there's a certain falsehood in the desire for permanence," García Montero remarked. "We live on in the poems, but we can't meet for a drink," the director of the Cervantes Institute recalled Margarit himself telling him. "He's right; remaining in a book is not the same as being able to meet. But it's true that he's with us, because his poems are a part of us," Montero concluded.

That's why the way he was honored this Wednesday evening was by reciting fragments of his poems, as he used to do with his daughter Juana when his illness was already very advanced. Texts whose starting point is the lessons of life, the everyday, but also lived history, were recalled during the event. "It's one of Margarit's great lessons," said Montero, referring to the bridge between the everyday and the profound that his verses create. "That's why many readers have been drawn to them," said the editor Emili Rosales, who was responsible for publishing his legacy. Joan Manuel Serrat and Ana Belén were in charge of reciting parts of some of his best-known poems: Spring Woman, Self-portrait, Deserter either The highest mountain... Serrat performed in Catalan and Ana Belén in Spanish, a gesture intended to honor what Margarit did for years: writing in both languages. Rosales even called it an "unusual virtue." While the event was primarily in Spanish, Miguel Poveda and Joan Albert Amargós closed it in Catalan, with the music Poveda composed for the poem. I won't see you anymore..