For me, the tricky part of writing an article is deciding what to talk about. I only write one this week, but I always struggle to choose a topic. Usually, once I have it and I've structured what I want to say in my head and on paper, I start writing and it flows pretty much on its own. Today, that's not happening: I know exactly what I want to talk about, but I don't know how to do it. In fact, this is the fifth draft I've written, and, for better or worse, it will be the final one, because I have to send the article to the editorial office soon. For now, on my computer, it has a very simple title, but one that makes its content very clear: "Latest Article." After several years writing for theNow we readI have to leave it, because starting in January I'm joining the Institut Ramon Llull teamIt's a job that excites me, that I'm very grateful for, that I have endless respect for, and that I consider a privilege. However, it has involved a sacrifice, because while I'm working, I won't be able to be a journalist.

It's not easy to get there. GuadalajaraWell, actually, it's not complicated, but it does require patience. Seven hours of waiting at Mexico City's airport, a surprisingly inhospitable place, because an airline has unilaterally decided to cancel our scheduled flight. It won't just be our team arriving from Barcelona a few days before the Guadalajara International Book Fair kicks off, where the city is the guest of honor. Unfortunately, many authors will find themselves in the same situation, and they will suffer the consequences. Special mention to the patience shown by David MoragasAfter a bumpy journey, he found all the joy in his participation in the book fair. He left happy after his "Echoes of the FIL," an activity involving some of the writers in the Barcelona program, which consists of visiting high school classrooms. Xavier Bosch smiled when I asked him how it went, and Miqui Otero explained that many students had greeted him in their pajamas, because in an interview he had explained that writing is 90% of the time spent in pajamas.

"I have no idea. I'd rather Franco die than be there." loose, slack and pendulum"He had to die one way or another." Here's the thing. Raimon's responseOn Wednesday, in response to a question from Helena Garcia Melero in the Everything is movingabout what he did when Franco died. It wasn't the only moment that made the audience laugh, even though he was talking about censorship during the dictatorship. But, really, I suppose that's just how it is: as absurd as it was, humor emerged. The writer and screenwriter Anna Manso, who was on the set, asked him what he would say to young people who downplay what the dictatorship and Francoism represented, and Raimon replied that it wouldn't do much for their parents—"we didn't listen to them either," he said, "when we were young." That's why he suggested it should be explained properly in schools, "where they learn." I was watching on TV, to talk about Mercè Ibarz's latest book, A girl in the city (Anagrama), a chronicle of her arrival in Barcelona (she is from Saidí), at seventeen years old. Raimon's words led me to a passage in the book where I think Ibarz says something important: "I often ask myself how it is that the word dictatorship So little has been heard and written about it in the years since. We say and write postwar period, Francoism, the regime, but dictatorship Not much. The emptiness of this non-word has permeated journalism and literature itself for decades. As if it were a generational word that didn't apply to those born after the seventies. Well, we're doing great. What could that mean? Isn't it even worth thinking about? Of course it is, it's worth thinking about. Once again, the importance of calling things by their name, of using words that have "full" content and a clear meaning.

«Good morning, it's time for culture. It's time for 'Cultures 2'Only fifteen days remain, until November 27th, to hear these words live. Tania Sarrias has said so many times to open Cultures 2A program that still airs Monday through Thursday on La 2. Today we learned it's being cancelled. It's very bad news. I immediately discussed it with a friend who knows very well what it's like to work in cultural programming on TV, and one of her phrases gave me the title of this article: "Culture, girl."

"It's embarrassing, sometimes, to say the name of the opposite of evil, because it's a word that's... perhaps too overused, somewhat worn out." The word that The writer Joan-Lluís Lluís felt some regret in pronouncing It was, of course, goodnessHe mentioned it to me in an interview I did with him about his latest novel. A rain song (Club Editor). It is a moving book that tells the story of Ella-Calla, an orangutan who is kidnapped from the forest where she lives in Borneo and suffers a series of "calamities," to put it mildly, inflicted by humankind. The light in this story is provided by an elderly woman who, the writer explains, allowed him to breathe while writing; A rain song It's a short book, but it's the one that has been hardest for him to write, surely because it's based on a real event: everything that happens to the orangutan, Luis read about in a news article. We won't give away any spoilers; it's impossible to explain more of the book, but the moment when this character appears is important—that old woman who also gives readers a breath of fresh air, because she represents kindness. Luis considers it very necessary; he told me about kindness: "It's a very powerful weapon, because it can really change so many things. When we do an act of kindness toward someone, we fix the world a little, in a humble way, but, moreover, we do ourselves good." And yet, the regret he mentioned at the beginning: "I've seen it with this novel, saying goodness "It seems a little strange to me."

When she was little, the Italian illustrator Beatrice Alemagna used to compete with her sister to see who could draw the prettiest picture. This kind of sibling contest was her father's idea, who years later admitted it might not have been his best. Although it might seem a questionable approach, it was also true that it planted the seed for his daughter Beatrice's career. When she was eight, the family went to Paris. My father chose the Eiffel Tower as the subject: whoever drew the best picture would win a Corolle doll, which I imagine was a kind of Nancy doll of my time. Alemagna wanted to win and studied the tower intently. That night, her father decided the doll was for her sister, and she cried in despair. However, at that moment, she promised herself that one day she would draw a beautiful Eiffel Tower and publish it in a book. Not only did she keep that promise, but today she is one of the most recognized and admired illustrators in the world, whose work in Catalan can be found published primarily by Combel and A Buen Paso.

"I'm a little impressed, I hope not to be paralyzed by mythomania, with these four heroes of my life." This is how the inaugural session of the Kosmopolis Festival, which brought together four guests who, as the director of the CCCB, Judit Carrera, said, "have marked the universal history of comics." It was only natural that the presenter of the event, Jordi Costa, admitted to being nervous before starting the talk with the artists Art Spiegelman, Charles Burns and Chris Ware and with Françoise Mouly, art director of The New Yorker for thirty years. (Yes, the magazine that produces those mind-blowing illustrated covers.) Jordi Costa wasn't the only one impressed in the room: tickets flew off the shelves as soon as they went on sale, there was a lot of anticipation, and a certain emotion was palpable in the air. The truth is, I felt privileged, like I was experiencing a special moment. It was hard to believe those four talents were sitting together, right in front of us, and they were greeted (and bid farewell) with tremendous applause. Chris Ware will forever remember it because he took out his camera and started taking a video of the audience. I don't know if it was an exceptional encounter for them, in the sense that it seemed like they met regularly; they were happy and relaxed. They conveyed a great admiration for one another, and this was perhaps one of the most beautiful things about the night: seeing how they spoke to each other and experiencing the respect they have for each other. Towards the end of the talk, when they were commenting that creating can be hard, an emotional Chris Ware told Spiegelman that it hurt him to hear that for the author of Maus It could be a suffering. "You've inspired me my whole life," Ware told her, and it came so naturally, almost as if it were the first time, that I must confess I was moved.

On the day of his mother's funeral, Writer Arundhati Roy was devastated. Not surprising, until she explains that she was also bewildered and somewhat embarrassed to find herself in that state. Her brother, LKC, told her, "I don't understand your reaction. You're the person I treated the worst." Roy writes, "Perhaps he was right, but it seems to me that the one who got the credit was him." She explains all this in the first chapter of'My refuge and my storm (Ara Llibres, translated by Imma Falcó), a kind of memoir that she recommends reading like a novel, as there is a constant mix of fiction and reality, filtered through memories.

A couple of weeks ago, the announcement of the performance of Bad Bunny In the halftime of the 2026 Super Bowl, a multi-million dollar event on many levels, also for the viewers who follow it, it aroused the enthusiasm of many people and also some criticism: the musician excluded the United States from his world tour because he did not want raids by Imi Trump's Service before and after the concerts. Those who disagreed with his performance, in February, wonder if the raids are the same now. Bad Bunny, forceful and at the same time very friendly, responded to them from the Saturday Night Live, a flagship NBC show known for its irreverent and unabashed humor, hosted by countless stars. In Spanish, in his opening monologue, he said he was happy to perform at the Super Bowl and praised all those Latinos who, before him, have worked to open doors, asserting that it's not his success, but a collective one, proving that no one will ever be able to erase the mark of Latinos and their contributions to the United States. In English, he added: "If you didn't understand what I just said, you have four months to learn it."

"You're such a feminist, how can you love the Brontë sisters or Jane Austen so much?" Editor Blanca Pujals has answered this question dozens of times: "Precisely because I'm a feminist, I like them. What seems normal to us now is largely thanks to the demands they made in the 19th century." One way to expand on this answer is to listen to the podcast Nineteenth-century punks The book that the publisher created with bookseller Carlota Freixenet will soon be five years old. Pujals was fed up with not finding content in Catalan that talked about these authors and thought that, instead of complaining, she would put a stop to it. She explained this in a discussion organized by writer and journalist Pep Antoni Roig at La Semana del Llibre en Català. She titled it Podcasts and days: Catalan literature on Spotify.

If you have the chance to stop by the Disseny Hub Barcelona this weekend, you can still visit the exhibition Miguel Milán. (Pre)industrial designer, fantastic. In addition to showing iconic works by the creator (you'll want it all), it explores his life and career, highlighting a very artisanal and respectful way of working, both with materials and crafts. There's a kind of "Milan philosophy," about the whys and hows of the objects he designed, which is also very well explained through a video in which he himself appears talking to several people. My favorite moment is when he talks about benches (he designed many). "I really believe in the bench as an element of communication," said Milan. "When you're on a bench, you're forced to say good morning." It's true that the conversation might end up on a good day, and quite a lot, he also added that, but I loved that way of conceiving a bench. I left the DHUB with a book by Milan under my arm and thinking, precisely, about the Week of the Book in Catalan.

The last time that The writer Sergi Pàmies gave a title to one of his books, the title knocked directly on his door: "Hello, I'm Both will be three". This is how he explained it to me in an interview in which we were talking about how a book title is chosen. The summary, for him, is that it is not so much a choice as a matter of chance. In the middle of writing, not yet especially aware that his stories had the passage of time in common, he sat down in front of the television, and then the news came: "title," he knew immediately. He told me, it would never have occurred to him; he needed that external stimulus, but it was crystal clear: the book would be called At two it will be three (Cuadernos Quema). "Sometimes, the pedants of romanticism, speaking of their great love, would say: "I'll recognize her when I find her." The same thing happens with titles, without the romantic transcendence. If a title comes to mind, you recognize it: this is it."

Dear readers of this column, I hope you had a good summer. Like most of you, I suppose, it seemed short to me. I've also read less than I thought I would, but I did devour one of the books I mentioned in my last article before the holidays: James, of Percival Everett (Ángulo, translated by Jordi Martín Lloret). It is very good to recover it now, as some friends have asked me if I would dedicate this first article to the controversy of the influencer María Pombo for his statements about reading.

There is no summer that I do not miss. Henning MankellThe Swedish writer died almost ten years ago, but it's been a few years since he last wrote new books about Inspector Kurt Wallander, his most famous character. In fact, it's him I miss every summer.

They say it's one of the most beautiful museums in the world, yet it's still relatively unknown. It's called Louisiana, but don't let the name send you to the United States: it's much closer, about 40 kilometers north of Copenhagen. Its origins are a stately private home belonging to a man who named it that because his three wives were named Louise. After it passed into the hands of a private art collector, he wanted to turn it into a museum, and in 1958, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art opened.

"Being an editor may not be the best job in the world, but it is the best job in the world for me." Aniol Rafel, the founder and creator of Periscopi, said this in this same newspaper in 2016. At that time, he had only been publishing under his own label for four years, but he had already established a connection with readers that has continued to grow. the stir caused by the acquisition of Periscope by Group 62 and, therefore, from Planeta: it's news that could have been merely "industry-related," but which I've seen commented on by many people who have no connection to it, beyond being loyal readers of the publisher (who, now that I think about it, God grants them that connection).

If you search on the internet where the poet and art critic was born Vicenç Altaió, you will find that it was in Santa Perpetua de Mogoda. However, if you have the opportunity to ask him directly, he will answer that he is the son of "the Sainte du Mouvement Perpétuel", a free translation that I think best reflects his personality.

"Best, best, best"This is what she said, excitedly, a fan of writer and artist Chris Ware, while he was signing one of his books at the Barcelona Comic Festival. His emotion was captured in a report on the program Martians from TV3 (get it back!) about the visit to Barcelona, ​​​​a few weeks ago, of the American comic book artist, on the occasion of the opening of the retrospective exhibition about him that can be seen at the CCCB, Drawing is thinkingThis article is, above all, to convey this message: don't miss it. Well, actually, there are two messages: let me add that Chris Ware is a genius.

One day, the Italian Bruno Munari, designer, artist, educator, and children's book author (and, in general, a pretty cool guy), explained to his students at Harvard University that when a good printer receives a new book, he looks at it very carefully, taking in every detail, from every possible angle. On the other hand, Munari continued, when readers pick up (we pick up) a book, they generally only care about the title, the author, the synopsis, and the price before starting to read. That day's lesson was entitled Everyone sees what they know., and it is precisely the title, in Spanish, of the first book by two great experts in children's albums, Piu Martínez and Anna Juan. In Each one comes what he knows (Gustavo Gili), the authors explain this lesson and take up the message of their admired Munari: the Italian showed that it's necessary to train the eye, to acquire some knowledge, in order to make readings that don't remain on the most superficial level.

"Truman Capote said that when he began to approach the real story that would be the center ofIn cold blood, suddenly had a doubt, the feeling that maybe he was going to run away: it ended up taking five years of his life, five years of nightmares. For me, it took me thirst." The French writer explains this. Emmanuel Carrère, about the book The adversary (Anagrama, translated by Marta Marfany). Around Sant Jordi, I discovered that Filmin had dedicated a section to Book Day. Under the name Filmin books, you will still find new documentaries related to literature. There are some about Gabriel Ferrater, Stephen King and Georges Perec, and although I was tempted to start with him, my unconditional passion for Emmanuel Carrère and The adversary, surely his most emblematic work, made me opt for Carrère, the writer and the murderer (Camille Juza, 2024).