Joan Veny recommends Sebastià Alzamora's latest "delight"

BarcelonaThe great Catalan dialectologist Joan Veny (Campos, 1932), at 93 years old, continues to dedicate a few hours a day to the study of the etymology and dialectal variety of words. He seals his commitment to Catalan by going every week to his office at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans to continue working with the meticulousness and passion with which he created seminal works such as Catalan speech and theLinguistic Atlas of the Catalan DomainThe years have not diminished his enjoyment of language. Therefore, he says that due to his "professional deformation," he can't help but notice this aspect when he reads for pleasure, especially poetry and, much less, fiction. As for poetry, he immediately recommends the book by Sebastià Alzamora Augusta Hall (Proa), which "is a delight." Through two long poems, Alzamora speaks of collective and personal memory: "It speaks of the mother and of Franco's persecution," says Veny. "It's a poem that appears simple, but it reaches you deeply," he declares.

As for fiction, he prefers a "beautiful" novel by his friend Ramon Solsona, Chocolate Street (Proa). "It makes a wonderful connection between creation and the country's language, analyzing words that it introduces through situations that allow it," explains Veny. The book is a memoir of the Solsona brothers' childhood in the town of Gràcia in the 1950s and 1960s, in which the author manages to activate the collective memory of his generation. This is what happened to Veny: in addition to enjoying Catalan, the aroma of chocolate has also awakened nostalgia for his Mallorcan village, Campos, where he spent his childhood and youth until he went off to university. "We all tend to hold on to good memories. With age, we like to look back in a serene, even indulgent way, devoid of acidity," Solsona explained to ARA. This does not mean that the rest has been forgotten: "I have written a pleasant book, but I don't forgive Francoism a single one," says Solsona.