Saint George and the books, a centuries-old story
The feast day has been celebrated since the 15th century, and from 1931 the Book Festival was incorporated
BarcelonaDuring the presentation of the book La intriga del funeral inconveniente, Eduardo Mendoza caused quite a stir by asking for Saint George to disappear from the celebration: “I am campaigning for April 23rd to stop being associated with Saint George –he assured–. For me it is Book Day, period. Saint George was an animal abuser who surely couldn't read. He is not the patron saint of writers or anything like that. He is a guy who has appropriated the festival,” he asserted. This Wednesday, Mariscal agreed
. The truth is that Saint George is many centuries older than Book Day.
There is some debate about the origin of the knight's legend. “It originates within the Byzantine Empire and became popular with the Crusades. Its diffusion was very rapid in the West, and Catalonia adopted him as patron, but so did Aragon and England,” explains historian Àngel Casals. “In the 15th century, the Diputació del General (the Generalitat) already commemorated the festival with a mass. It was a very important festivity, and if the king happened to be in the city, he was invited. At that time all festivals were religious, but this was the most secular of all; it was a holiday and a flower market was held,” adds Casals. Red roses gained popularity because the episode of the dragon's blood transformed into a rose bush was mixed with the Christian metaphor of Christ's blood turned into a rose. The flower fair was held in the Pati dels Tarongers of the Generalitat, and was known as the Fira dels Enamorats.
The proposal to make this day a festival of precept was made by the Generalitat in 1436 in the Cortes, but it did not become effective until 1456. After the defeat of 1714, the festivity disappeared and was not reinstituted until 1810. “It was recovered in the 19th century and was associated with Valentine's Day,” says the historian. With the Renaixença, the recovery of the Catalan language and culture became a priority, and Saint George was given a great boost. The definitive popularization of the custom of giving roses arrived with the Mancomunitat, in 1914, when the fair was re-established in the Palau de la Generalitat. “With the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, Saint George's festivity disappeared,” says Casals.
Initiative of a Valencian devoted to Cervantes
But it was during that dictatorship (1923-1930) that books began to appear on the streets. "It was the initiative of a Valencian, Vicent Clavel Andrés, who was a publisher and owned the Cervantes publishing house, which he moved to Barcelona. He was a devotee of Cervantes and proposed promoting books with a special day, October 7th, which was the approximate date of Cervantes' death, because it is not known for certain when he died," assures the philologist Manuel Llanas. The initiative was very successful and was approved by the Cambra del Llibre in 1926. "In Catalonia it had great commercial success, and publishers enthusiastically joined in by setting up stalls in the street. In the rest of Spain it did not have as much impact. In Madrid, for example, there was more of a focus on conferences and commemorations, but it did not have as much commercial success," explains Llanas.
"The problem is that October 7th coincided with the start of the school year, when textbooks were also sold, and it was decided to move the celebration to the date of Cervantes' burial, April 23rd. It was made official in 1930, but the first time Sant Jordi and the Book Day coincided was when the Second Republic had already been proclaimed, on April 23, 1931," adds Llanas. The Festa del Llibre continued throughout Franco's dictatorship, but without much mention of Sant Jordi. With the democratic transition, especially from 1976-1977 onwards, the feast day was progressively recovered in the public space. The restoration of political and cultural freedoms allowed Sant Jordi to once again become a massive celebration in the streets, with stalls of books and roses, and with a strong civic and Catalan identity dimension. All of this makes it a unique celebration, different from a conventional book fair.
