Saint George and the dragon

Our colleague Eduardo Mendoza has said, these days, taking advantage of the fact that we writers have a microphone, that Sant Jordi should be "the day of the book, period" because the saint in question "is not the patron saint of writers or anything like that". What's more, according to him "he was an animal abuser who probably couldn't read".

We have two unique traditions in Catalonia that are perfect in their conception: the caga tió and Sant Jordi. The caga tió is a marvel of bullying. A log is forced to defecate through blows with a stick while being demanded the type of product it should expel. Sardines are a red flag, as they contain too much sodium. Turrones, on the other hand, are a green flag, for their flavor. Once the defecation has occurred, it is burned. Sant Jordi is an incredible festival where those who love each other give each other roses and books. The streets fill with authors and readers. It stems, like all of ours, from a violent story. Sant Jordi kills the dragon to save the princess. The princess is about to star in a cannibalistic apocalypse due to her father's incompetence, who resigns himself to handing her over to the monster, committing an unforgivable crime of omission. Sant Jordi, a monarch to the end, is not interested in any of the other creatures eaten by the glutton, only in the blue-blooded one. From the dragon's red blood, incidentally, a rose bush is born, which is what gives rise to the other very important part of the festival, besides the books: the roses.

Perhaps Saint George was illiterate, nor should he have been a gardener, but I doubt he was an animal abuser. He did not fight the dragon. He killed it in self-defense. Like wild boars, it wanted to eat what it shouldn't. In any case, illiterate or not, Saint George is our literary father. The novels that young people read the most are "romantasy. They have two fundamental elements: a "spicy" love story and dragons. Many dragons. It cannot be denied that if anyone understands dragons, it is us, Catalans. Happy Saint George's Day.