The new Catalan Literature Night: questions we will answer in March
BarcelonaThis week we have been shaken by the changes in the Saint Lucy's NightThe event, which will become the Night of Catalan Letters (NLC), will be held in March and will include more awards. I, frankly, have mixed feelings about the news.
On the one hand, I celebrate the new awards for genres that are often overlooked—the comic book award, the award for dramatic works—as well as the creation of Lo Somni, another award for emerging authors. The announcement of a new thought award for 2027 is also wonderful, since the essay is a cornerstone of any literary field, and in our country, we are short on awards that promote essayistic works. The Montserrat Franquesa Prize, which PEN has awarded since 2016, will now be part of the NLC, and perhaps this is also good news because it will give more visibility to an important award that puts the translator at its center, although I don't know if it will be too diluted in the avalanche of awards. I also don't doubt that Òmnium is pursuing all of this in the best of faith—I mean, I don't believe in conspiracy theories about the dark forces—but I'm not sure that all good intentions will come to fruition.
March means Sant Jordi's race
In short, the operation has a positive side. However, the changes to the NLC also raise a number of questions for me, to which I find it harder to give enthusiastic answers. The first concerns the new date. The NLC will be held in March. Everyone who works in the publishing industry knows what March means. March means Sant Jordi's Day, and Sant Jordi means a few things: media saturation, with outlets unable to cover all the books released around this time; bookstore space saturation; and the preeminence of a certain type of more commercial literature (the kind that ends up selling on Sant Jordi's Day, which is when even those who never buy books start buying them). In fact, a few months ago I was talking about the dangers threatening the Catalan literary ecosystem, and I mentioned the case of a couple of independent publishers who experienced a massive drop in sales on Sant Jordi's Day this year, despite the "sweet spot" mentioned in several news articles about the NLC (sweet spot for whom?). So, when I see that the NLC will take place in March, I wonder if these were really the best dates to hold it; even more so, I tell myself, perhaps they are the best dates, but the best dates for whom? (Hint: look at the photo of the toast.) If we want to deseasonalize book sales, wouldn't it have been better to hold it during traditionally slower times (autumn) or keep it in December?
And you'll say: but everyone's involved, the Publishers' Guild, the Booksellers' Guild, the IEC, etc. Yes and no. First, I must say that I miss the AELC, the Association of Writers in the Catalan Language, which raises further questions: can we promote an event like this without the involvement of the very people who make it possible? Can we imagine the Gaudí Awards organized by everyone except the film directors and screenwriters? Well, I don't know, it seems anomalous to me. Second, while it's true that the Publishers' Guild is represented, I wonder to what extent it's defending the interests of all its members; the truth is, it's impossible for it to do so, because the interests of its members are irreconcilable: it's clear that, in many respects, what benefits Abacus or Random House can't possibly benefit publishers like Angle or L'Otra at all. To what extent, then, will all this benefit the three big publishers (the only ones who appear in the photo) and harm the smaller ones? And yes, I know, the NLC also includes the Òmnium Prize for novels, which all publishers compete for, but that raises another question.
Until now, the Òmnium Prize had sufficient media coverage and dedicated space. To what extent will accumulating prizes on a single day reduce media coverage? If we have ten prizes on ten different dates, they'll occupy a page (or half a page) on ten different dates, and the equivalent space in other media and networks. But it's obvious that if we have ten prizes on one day, they won't occupy ten pages in a newspaper the next day. I mean, while so many prizes accumulated might have the virtue (?) of giving greater visibility to some awards, it can also cause the winners to become diluted due to sheer volume, and everything will be erased from the memory of potential readers.
I'm running out of space, but not the questions. I also read that the Sant Jordi prize money has been increased and that the finalist category (worth €10,000) has been reinstated. This is all well and good, except that the prize money for other awards hasn't been touched. I've been hovering around the meager €6,000 of the Rodoreda Prize for years. It's a disgrace that the short story prize is less than a tenth of the novel prize, just as it's a disgrace that other prize money hasn't increased either: the way we treat poetry and children's and young adult literature in this country continues to be humiliating (in this regard, you can also read Tina Vallès in VilawebAnd yes, it's true, I mentioned earlier the inclusion of awards for undervalued genres, but I fear it's all a smokescreen because, deep down, what's really being pushed is still the novel.
Spring will bring us the answers to all these questions. Do we want to hear them?
