March ends, and April begins on Tuesday, the Tuesday of the Thousand Rains, as the Castilians say, although the rains have already fallen in March. April is a somewhat hectic month because it usually includes Holy Week, with all that this entails in terms of tradition and memory. And for Catalans, the days of Sant Jordi and the Moreneta, the patron saints. Sant Jordi, with its commercial and floral bustle, books and roses, and the Moreneta, which Father Cinto called the rose of April. This year, Holy Week comes late, so the patron saints of Catalonia arrive right away, once the liturgical celebrations of Christ's Passion and Resurrection have already passed. A group of days outside the current. Since the weather is as changeable as the entire world, we don't know whether it will rain or not on Sant Jordi, whether the uncertain Shakespearean glory will produce a sunny or rainy day. It already happened a few years ago, when a violent downpour flooded stalls, books, writers, and publishers. And I got soaked as a duck. We don't know anything. But it doesn't matter to him. The fact that Catalonia has a soaked Sant Jordi shouldn't in any way mar the celebration, because the celebration is within. Well, don't think I'm a fan of the day, and even less so in recent years, when it has been overly commercialized. Half a century ago, when I was thirty, it was a holiday that could have excited me, but not anymore. Literature has practically disappeared, and we've moved on to self-help books and inconsistent novels.
The world is heading down rocky and uncertain paths, it's true, and we don't know what will happen in Ukraine, Gaza, or Greenland. We don't know if the madmen who rule the world—Trump, Musk, Putin, and Netanyahu, among others—will lead us down a dead end, with all of this. People are dying nonstop in Ukraine and Gaza, and politicians say they're against the war, but they keep arming themselves, manufacturing weapons, and selling them. Now, weapons are called security. I'm only sure of one thing: money will continue to rule the world when the madmen who now rule are gone forever. Because others will come.
I don't know what this spring, which has barely begun, will be like. In fact, if you want me to say it, it's not the season I like the most. I love autumn and winter the most. Spring is uncertain, fragile. Sometimes it takes a while. Other times it quickly swells like a splendid May that rots without you noticing. April is surprisingly fragile, something very unpleasant. It breaks like a stalk of asparagus, quickly losing its blossom, like the acacias and apple trees in Carner's poem. Or like the hawthorns in the stream or the myrtle, which loses its flower in a sigh. Everything slips into the invisible river where the dead springs flow toward God's smile. In everything that ends badly in this world, Carner, who was a good boy, knows how to see the bright side. The blackbirds and cardinals that will never have been born because their nests have been torn apart by the claws of the kites or the gusty winds, will live on in this smile of God. And from the acorns fallen on beaten paths, crushed, will spring holm oaks more beautiful than any in the world. One must have a very refined, hopeful, and kind soul to believe that all the creatures who are dying defenselessly in Gaza and Ukraine, all the creatures who will have no human life, even in a miserable and devastated land, all these creatures who are like crushed acorns, will grow and grow. And creatures die, their bodies die, but souls do not die. If God exists, the souls He created never die; they live on in this smile. All these things, all these mysteries, now come the days when we must meditate on them. Above all, the most surprising of all and the most incredible, that of the Resurrection of Christ. Because, as Saint Paul wrote, if Christ has not been raised, our faith is in vain. We will relive all of this in this fragile April: the palms of Sunday, the Thursday supper, the betrayal in the Garden of Olives, the imprisonment and the trial, the scourging and the crown of thorns, the hands of Pontius Pilate, the bitter tears of Saint Peter, the climb to Calvary of hope, the soldiers, the dice on Jesus' seamless tunic. And Joseph of Arimathea, with his white sheet. And Mary and John and the empty tomb…
