Dear friend and colleague Ferran Torrent,
I am writing to you now that it has been so long since we last saw each other, and taking advantage of the fact that our old program is on First cousins by the platform formerly known as TV3. Yes, yes, now it's called differently. I think it's fine, for the record, the problem is me, I'm guilty of being old-fashioned and boomer and unbearably nostalgic. I've had a hard time with this Mister Proper and Mr. Clean thing. I liked the fact that the street where the TV is was called "TV3 Street," and every time I go to Melero, I fear they've already changed it to "3Cat Street."
If I'm writing to you, however, it's to congratulate you for having renounced the Prize for Valencian Literature that the Generalitat Valenciana awarded you last year. I'm glad you did it by letter, which is how they read it, reminding the president, by the way, that the "diploma" he gave you "was swept away by the ravine."
Your reasons, the reasons of a writer in the Valencian language, with a very important work for the world, are ours. Your first cousin tells you so.
Just one thing, dear. The prize, when you received it, no longer had a financial endowment. I had 150,000 euros until the Generalitat (Catalan government) abolished them in 2012. And that's what I'm getting at, Ferran. If we assume this hadn't happened this way, if you had been paid, like Joan Fuster in his day, you wouldn't have had to pay it back, I think. Never do that, or you'd lose all the prestige you have in my eyes. Always return the diplomas. Never return the shells.
