"Love knows no borders": this was the banner that Queen Máxima of the Netherlands held up this Saturday during the massive party and demonstration of Amsterdam's Pride Day, making her the first European queen to participate in and lead a march in favor of the rights of the LGBTIQ+ community.

Besides being one of the most popular footballers of the moment thanks to the goal that gave Spain victory against the Argentine team to the football World Cup final, Ferran Torres has also inspired the Valencia Oceanogràfic, the largest aquarium in the European Union, to name one of its grey sharks, of the species Carcharhinus plumbeus. The decision has been made as a recognition of the footballer's connection to marine conservation and to raise societal awareness about the importance of protecting these fish with cartilaginous bodies and rough skin. "We want to reinforce the message that these animals are emblematic and indispensable for the functioning of ecosystems," the institution states in a press release.

"I want to live with Luis for the next 30 years, even if the last ones are, as they popularly say, with a bit of a struggle", assured the Catalan journalist Susanna Griso – presenter of the morning magazine Espejo público on Antena 3 – shortly after announcing her wedding to the businessman and economist from Madrid, Luis Enríquez. Although they have known each other for more than two decades, it wasn't until a year and a half ago that the two friends became a couple, and they have chosen the Costa Brava as the setting for the double celebration of their wedding.

A year and a half after Anagrama "indefinitely suspended" the publication ofEl odio,, in which Luisgé Martín (Madrid, 1962) collected the letters he exchanged with José Bretón, who is serving a prison sentence for the murder of his two children, the Madrid-born author has announced the publication of a new book with Altamarea in which he will give his version of events and which will arrive in bookstores on September 30.

With La gran família (Club Editor, 2025), the writer and editor Antònia Carré-Pons (Terrassa, 1960) has won the last Òmnium award for best novel of the year. An avid reader of new releases and classics, Carré-Pons is clear about which book to recommend for this summer: Cosdiví, by Theodore Sturgeon, which Males Herbes has published in Catalan with a translation by Josep Sempere.

If summer is "the promise that life can begin again", as Francis Scott Fitzgerald assured, a good way to accompany this restart can be reading. The good health of the Catalan publishing sector makes it possible for us to undertake a multitude of journeys – geographical and temporal – without leaving home. We select ten intrepid books that have arrived in Catalan bookstores in recent months.

A Greek island whose name we never learn is the idyllic setting where Erietta (Acantilado, 2026) unfolds, the debut as a novelist by Clara Pastor (Massachusetts, 1970) after having published two short story collections. The author, translator, and editor – she is the soul of the exquisite Elba since 2009 – explains the summer that Fiona, a middle-aged woman who has just divorced, spends in a rented house, trying to put her life back together. Among men who desire her and others who disappoint her, Fiona meets a solitary and wise woman who acts as a grandmother without being one and has a very particular relationship with her son.

"I try to write every day, never to fail", said Josep Vallverdú in 2022, months before turning 99, when he presented one of his latest youth novels, The Eighth Dwarf (La Galera), in which he imagined an alternative version of the popular Snow White. For more than six decades – the ones separating The Fish Seller (Arimany, 1960) and Treasured Silence (Pagès, 2023)– Vallverdú dedicated himself to building, with admirable constancy, rigor, and heterogeneity, one of the most prolific works – exceeding 200 books – in contemporary Catalan literature, which this Tuesday closes with his death at 103 years old, as the ARA has been able to confirm. Death comes to him months after publishing The Return of Rovelló (La Galera, 2025), in which he revived one of the most beloved characters of his work, that of a little dog who got lost in the middle of the woods.

"Today is an important day for the authors of our country, because the entities that represent them have joined together to promote a shared publishing contract model that is more transparent, balanced, and respectful", announced this Monday at the Ateneu Barcelonès Sebastià Portell (ses Salines, 1992), president of the Association of Writers in the Catalan Language since 2022, during the presentation of the initiative he has promoted and to which eight more entities have joined, representing a total of more than 4,000 authors. "The main objective is to improve the conditions of our representatives, which in many cases are precarious", he added, accompanied by representatives from PEN Català, the Association of Writers of Catalonia (ACEC), the Professional Association of Translators and Interpreters of Catalonia (APTIC), and three playwright associations: the Catalan, the Valencian, and that of the Balearic Islands. The initiative, a pioneer in the State, has encountered a first hurdle, that of the publishers, who "for the moment have refused to be part of the conversation".

Joan Salvat-Papasseit (Barcelona, 1894–1924) had a short and difficult life, but more than a century after his death he is still remembered thanks to his avant-garde, direct and transparent verses, collected in books such as L'irradiador del port i les gavines (Tallers Atenes A.G., 1921) and El poema de la rosa als llavis (Llibreria Nacional Catalana, 1923). "The love for Salvat-Papasseit has nothing to do only with the emotional quality of his poetry, but with those who kept the flame of his memory alive," argues editor Jordi Cornudella – who recovered his Poesia completa at Edicions 62 in 2024 – during the presentation of an essential volume to bring back to life the author's work, Sobre Salvat-Papasseit i altres escrits, by Tomàs Garcés (Barcelona, 190–1993).

Both grew up in the same Barcelona neighborhood during the last third of the 19th century, studied fine arts at La Llotja, were part of the same artistic group –la Colla del Safrà– and, later, excelled in the portrait, pictorial or literary, of a parallel, vibrant, and marginalized reality, that of the Roma people. "How is it possible that such close friends were never mentioned together in the press of the time?" asks Julià Guillamon (Barcelona, 1962) in relation to two of the characters who have obsessed him for decades, the painter Isidre Nonell (Barcelona, 1872-1911) and the writer Juli Vallmitjana (Barcelona, 1873-1937). This question has led him to dedicate a magnificent 700-page essay to the two creators, written in collaboration with Joan Mar Sauqué, Nonell, Vallmitjana i els gitanos (Edicions de 1984, 2026), and to showcase the relationship between them, little studied until now, in an exhibition at the Fundació Palau de Caldes d'Estrac, which can be visited until September 27.

Commissioner Jules Maigret's eyes "smile" as he has breakfast, accompanied by his wife, because life is "pleasant". They are both at the house in Meung-sur-Loire that they have been fixing up for years for the day Maigret has to retire. The 55-year-old man has two years and a few months left before leaving the police force, and this is perhaps the only regret he feels amidst the summer calm and the promise of lobster with mayonnaise for lunch. This is how "Maigret's Patience, novel by Georges Simenon (Liège, 1903 - Lausanne, 1989) which has just ceased to be unpublished in Catalan thanks to the small and exquisite Barcelona publishing house Días Contados, launched in 2009 by lawyer Ramon Girbau.

"Be reborn from history. Dream it and remake it," said the poet Pere Quart. Montserrat Duch Plana (Tarragona, 1959), a professor at the Rovira i Virgili University, has kept these words very much in mind when taking on a "pioneering challenge": to explain the history of Catalonia from the perspective of women and the contribution they have made. "Until now, we had a chronic deficit: we had explained history from the perspective of men and from activities like power and business. Aspects such as daily life, work, or sexuality, in which women have been fundamental, have been left aside," explained Duch this Wednesday during the presentation of Grup 62's autumn novelties, which highlighted History of Women, which Edicions 62 will put on sale at the end of October. "Many European countries have a history of women like the one that will see the light of day at Edicions 62 this October. The first, History of Women in the West, was coordinated by Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot in 1990. Since then, 36 years have passed. It is time to fill this gap," he added.

If you arrive at the Ateneu Barcelonès and are greeted by a large head with the wrinkled face of Josep Carner, it is the unmistakable sign that only good, different, and exciting things can happen that evening. "Today we will be guided by the most important and one of the most overlooked institutions in our lives: chance," proclaimed the poet and rapper Oriol Sauleda at the beginning of the show The square root, a production by La Clota Cooperativa that is a heterogeneous collage of artistic actions that included readings by Enric Casasses, Maria Sevilla, and Júlia Bacardit, a fencing duel between Modernists and Novecentists, sonic actions by Xavi Lloses, and even a small session of choral gymnastics to the rhythm of a violinist from the Riba Orquestra.

Perhaps because he won the last Jocs Florals prize with the book Descripció del món (Godall), Martí Sales (Barcelona, 1979) meets us in the garden of the Muñoz Ramonet Foundation, an oasis of trees, plants, and sculptural fountains that opened to the public ten years ago. A poet, narrator, translator, and singer – he was part of the fondly remembered Surfing Sirles – Sales received the prestigious award at the Saló de Cent of Barcelona City Council, where he took the opportunity to hand out leaflets to attendees in case they wanted to collaborate financially "with the struggle of the Vallcarca neighborhood against gentrification" and so that some residents could "wipe out the disproportionate fines from the police persecution to which the current council subjects them, while saying that the most important axis of its program is the right to housing".

Manuel Arjona, one of the four founders of the dance, glam and electronic pop music groupLocomía, has died suddenly in Viladecans, the city where he had lived for a long time, at the age of 58. "Today Manuel's light has risen to heaven, but his memory lives on with us," assured Luis Font, a group mate, on Instagram, along with Xavier Font – his brother – and Gard Passchier.

The Iliad which has just published Adesiara, one of the young publishing houses that has persistently bet on new translations of Greek and Latin classics -Hesiod, Lucian of Samosata, Euripides, Sallust, Plautus, Ovid and a long etcetera- is special for many reasons.

"In this solitary environment, in this infinite desert today populated by men of all the world's lineages, we Catalans also arrive, in the thousands (...) We leave Barcelona without being aware of what we are leaving or what we will find upon arrival... and the arrival at the great city of La Plata is sad... for the emigrant." These words summarize the deep longing felt, for years, by Enric Martí i Muntaner (Vilanova i la Geltrú, 1889-Buenos Aires, 1954): although he left for Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century with the aim of making his fortune, he only managed to survive in the middle of the Pampa for almost three decades, and guided by love for his country – and, above all, for his language – he undertook the verse translation of an emblematic poem by José Hernández, Martín Fierro (1872), which he managed to publish in 1936, after several vicissitudes.

The life of the economist, politician, and writer Antoni Vives (Barcelona, 1965) took a radical turn when, in 2018, he landed in Saudi Arabia to meet with the country's prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and the team with which he was preparing Vision 2030, which was to translate into the urbanization of a region in the middle of the desert "the size of Belgium" called Neom – which integrates the words new and future– to build "a city designed for nine million inhabitants" in the middle of the desert. He has now decided to explain the seven years he spent leading that mammoth project in a memoir literary and very interesting, In the secret country (Pòrtic, 2026), which does not hide the contradictions of an absolute monarchy guided by Sharia, capable of having a journalist critical of the regime murdered and dismembered as Jamal Khashoggi and which, at the same time, has the aspiration to modernize itself. Vives's own trajectory will surprise more than one reader. In addition to winning the Crexells prize with Farringdon Road's Dream (La Magrana, 2011) and the Bookseller with And tomorrow, paradise (RBA, 2014), has been deputy mayor for Urbanism between 2011 and 2015 at Barcelona City Council —during Xavier Trias's last term— and in 2022 was sentenced to two years in prison, settled with a compensation of 155,000 euros, for irregular contracting of the then mayor of Santa Coloma de Cervelló, Jesús Arévalo, by the entity Barcelona Regional, which Vives had chaired.

Up to now, and for almost thirty years, we have known Josep Pedrals (Barcelona, 1979) as a poet, a performer, a lecturer, and a cultural manager. With Poeticismes (Arcàdia, 2026), he debuts as an essayist with the same combination of pleasantness, erudition, and humor that abounds in his verses. In the catch-all drawer that is Pedrals' new book, we find reflections on emperors buried in honey or on the monument to Jacint Verdaguer on Passeig de Sant Joan, chronicles of some of the thousands of recitals in which he has participated around the world —like the one that took him to Macedonia accompanied by Adam Zagajewski—, vindications of authors less known to readers than they should be, and a wealth of curious technical speculations on poetry writing, one of his great passions, along with omnivorous reading and a love for the stage.