Tomorrow is Sant Jordi

Tomorrow is Sant Jordi. For as long as I can remember, April 23rd has been one of the most important days of the year for me. I've lived in all its hues, but when I was young and it was simply a beautiful day, I couldn't imagine how fundamental it would end up being in my life.

The first Sant Jordi I particularly remember was the day I fell in love with my first rose. We'd been dating a boy since December; we were very young, and I think by spring we'd barely exchanged a few quick kisses.

The boy in question was a bit of a kumbaya type, as we used to call it back then: a hiker, a lover of the simple life, not at all interested in clothing brands, motorcycles, or other things that usually interested teenagers at the time. As expected, he didn't go to a flower shop to buy me a rose; he picked it from a garden full of rosebushes halfway between his house and mine. It was a red rose, with no overly long stem or any embellishments. No spike, no greenery, no flag, no cellophane wrap. A small, bare red rose. It smelled lovely.

The second Sant Jordi that stands out in my memory was when I was 20. My father had died in March, and mourning was still an open wound. When April 23rd arrived, it caught me off guard; I hadn't thought about it that year. Seeing the people on the streets, the book festival and roses everywhere, everyone's smiles, gave me a pang of nostalgia that made me cry for a good part of the day. Perhaps it was the first time I thought, "Happiness will never be complete again."

The third Sant Jordi—in chronological order; if we're talking about importance, it's the first of all—was in 1995, thirty years ago. My first son came into the world at twelve noon on April 23rd. Everyone gave me roses. Everyone asked me if his name was Jordi (no, I didn't). I thought it was a beautiful day to start life. I didn't know yet that April 23rd would be a busy time for me and we would have to find a time to celebrate her birthday.

Then came all the Sant Jordis I've experienced as a writer, from those when I spent the day alone and bored, dying of embarrassment, and signed one or two copies, to the year I won an important prize and saw the queues of readers grow in front of me with genuine amazement.

I've experienced a very hot Sant Jordi, rainy, and hailstorm, cold and drizzle in the morning and sunny in the afternoon. I was in a state of shock, and I was left with a blister on my heel.

Then 2020 arrived, and on Sant Jordi's Day, I was hospitalized in the rather dilapidated Can Ruti, and my colleagues from Òmnium in Badalona sent me a book where each of them described their prison. The nurses came to see what I had, so much so that I cried. What will Sant Jordi 2025 be like?