Paella sparks discussions even on the day it appears as a prize. On March 1st, the day Òmnium Cultural awarded Josep Piera (Beniopa, 1947) the Prize of Honor for Catalan Letters, the entity did so with a Valencian paella, large in diameter, but, alas!, the debate began. "That it was white, and not yellow, that it wasn't right for me to be given the prize along with a paella because it was associating me with a cliché, it was even said that from now on Majorcans should receive prizes with ensaïmades, and Catalans, with botifarra and beans", calmly explains the writer Josep Piera in Lleida, where he has gone to participate in the Lleida Poetry Festival. But if Josep Piera has dedicated dozens of pages to paella! If he has dedicated countless hours of study to paella! If the angels sing to the paella that Josep Piera cooks!

The selection committee for the Òmnium Prize for best novel of the year has chosen the 10 shortlisted works for the ninth edition of the award. The winner will not be announced until... The Night of Catalan Letters The ceremony will be held on Saturday, March 14th in the Oval Room of the MNAC, and will award the country's most lucrative prize for a published work, with a prize of €25,000 (€20,000 goes directly to the winner, and €5,000 is allocated for promotion). The 10 nominated novels are:

Following the European Union's Advocate General's opinion in favor of the amnesty, it is expected that the CJEU will rule in the same vein in the coming weeks, thus giving a definitive boost to its implementation. The reality is that 522 days after the law's approval, the pace of its application is exasperating due to delaying tactics not only by the Supreme Court against the main leaders, but also by many judges against various defendants. It is particularly curious, then, that the first group to benefit en masse from the amnesty was that of police officers prosecuted for mistreatment or excessive use of force. As many as 164 officers have already been granted amnesty. It wasn't until last May, the date of the latest data from Òmnium's count, that the number of activists granted amnesty surpassed that of police officers, reaching 178. According to the organization's data, of the 726 people with criminal cases and those under investigation by the Court of Auditors, only these 178 have been granted amnesty, while 9 others have not. In 35 cases, amnesty requests have been directly denied; in 48, a response from the European Union is pending; in 75, there has been no response yet; and, notably, in 332, there is no record that the amnesty process has even begun. In the case of individuals with administrative sanctions, primarily fines, only 21 out of 884 cases have been granted amnesty. These figures demonstrate that the Spanish justice system is dragging its feet on this issue and, with few exceptions, most judges follow the Court's lead on amnesty, employing all sorts of delaying tactics. This is why the EU Advocate General's opinion on Thursday is so important. Because when their arguments are found in a ruling by the CJEU, the Supreme Court and the rest of the courts will be left without arguments, since it will have been proven that the amnesty is not only constitutional, as the Constitutional Court itself ruled, but also that it does not contradict the legislation or values ​​of the European Union (on the contrary, because the Advocate General spoke of "context").

This week we have been shaken by the changes in the Saint Lucy's NightThe event, which will become the Night of Catalan Letters (NLC), will be held in March and will include more awards. I, frankly, have mixed feelings about the news.

It's been 75 years since Josep M. Cruzet, founder of the Librería Catalònia and editor of SelectaHe promoted a literary competition to give visibility to Catalan-language writing at a time—the immediate post-war period—when the two main awards, the Navidad and the Ciudad de Barcelona, were in Spanish. In that first edition, in 1951, of the Noche de Santa Lucía (Night of Saint Lucy), still held clandestinely, the Joanot Martorell Prize was awarded to The narrow street, of Josep PlaSince then, the Night of Saint Lucy has been celebrated every year on December 13th, but the literary festival has been evolving. The latest of these changes was announced this Monday at noon at the Institute of Catalan Studies (IEC) by Xavier Antich, president of Òmnium Cultural, the organization behind the event: from now on, the festival will move to March and will expand with the announcement of new awards—such as the Òmnium Prize for comics and literary works—for the best novel of the year. The new Night of Saint Lucy will be called the Night of Catalan Letters, and the next edition will be held on Saturday, March 14th in the Oval Room of the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) and will be broadcast live on TV3. "It will be a great iconic event that should serve as a powerful platform for our literature," said Xavier Antich. "To make this possible, we are announcing a major alliance with authors, publishers, translators, booksellers, and libraries—all the players in the book industry." The Catalan Institute of Publishers (IEC) has also joined. "We are thrilled to be involved because it celebrates one of the best moments for authors who write in Catalan," said Teresa Cabré, president of the Institute. "It is generous of Òmnium to have offered us the opportunity to organize this grand celebration with them, especially considering that the Night of Santa Llúcia is already in full swing. It also brings together many of the stakeholders involved in the promotion of Catalan literature."

One in three young people misses more culture in Catalan and policies that promote it, especially Catalan-language films and video games. However, although they find Catalan culture neither elitist nor of lower quality, they don't consume it solely out of linguistic commitment.

The independence movement is losing a sheet with every wash. After losing its absolute majority in Parliament, disenchantment is also taking its toll on the streets. The independence movement has once again brought thousands of people out onto the streets for the Diada, but the discouragement caused by the paralysis of the process has resulted in a drop in participation. While last year 60,000 people demonstrated in downtown Barcelona, ​​this year it was half that number, around 28,000 according to the Guardia Urbana (City Police). The ANC (National Action Party) estimated the number of attendees at 100,000 in Barcelona, ​​​​Girona, ​​and Tortosa and emphasized that bad weather could also have influenced the decline in the mobilization. Be that as it may, the independence movement is going through a difficult time.

A trench intellectual, resilient, imaginative, and stubborn. With these words, and many more, Mònica Terribas has defined the Valencian Eliseo Clemente (Llombai, 1940) who this Saturday at the UPF received the first Òmnium Award for National Commitment, granted by the board of Òmnium Cultural. A cultural activist and defender of the national framework of the Països Catalans, Climent is the founder of the weekly magazine The Weather, co-founder of Acció Cultural del País Valencià, promoter of the October Awards and founder of the Tres i Quatre bookstore and publishing house. "The country has completely captivated me. I have become completely obsessed with saving it in order to generate a future for our nation. I maintain this obsession. To put it as Espriu would say, I will always remain faithful to these people," said Climent upon receiving the award in front of an excited audience, Aragonés, and the Minister of Language Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila.

Throughout almost six decades of awards, the Honorary Prize for Catalan Literature has distinguished narrators, poets, linguists, singer-songwriters and historians, but until now it had not recognized anyone who had dedicated his life to philosophy as Pere Lluís FontLluís's intellectual contribution has been deployed, broadly speaking, on four levels: university teaching, translation, publishing, and writing. "To think is to rethink." "Catalonia and philosophy have been my two passions." "We are monolingual, but it suits us to be polyglots." These have been three of the award winner's mottos throughout his long and fruitful career.

The historian of philosophy, theologian and translator Pere Lluís Font (Pujalt, 1934) has just been recognized with the 57th Honorary Prize for Catalan Literature, endowed with 20,000 euros and sponsored annually by Òmnium Cultural. In addition to having been a university professor for four decades, Luis was one of the driving forces behind the prestigious collection. Philosophical texts –first in Laia, and then in Edicions 62–, has translated Kant, Pascal, Montaigne and Spinoza into Catalan and has written books such as From Sibiuda to Pascal, passing through Montaigne and Descartes (Pages, 2014) and Philosophy of Religion: Six Essays and a Note (Fragmenta, 2017). "He has been one of the most important and unique philosophers on our scene, an active intellectual for more than fifty years, and who has also left numerous disciples," stated Xavier Antich, president of Òmnium, during the ceremony where the award was announced. "Pere Lluís Font also stands out for his civic commitment, his exemplary ethics in the defense of tolerance and his participation in numerous collective initiatives linked to thought," added Antich, who emphasized the importance of recognizing a philosopher with the Honorary Prize for the first time: "A culture cannot be complete if it does not take thought into account."

"I love you and this is a cry for help. I love you and that is a let's do it together, please". These are the two opening sentences of We dreamed of an island, the novel with which Roc Casagran (Sabadell, 1980) has won the 2024 Sant Jordi Award. These are phrases that give an indication of what the novel will be like: they establish the narrative and stylistic coordinates – a realism with poetic tones –, they mark its ethical and ideological orientation – in humanism with utopian echoes – and on the surface.

Toni Güell (Barcelona, ​​​​1979) reads every week – I have told him – a hundred opinion articles by national and international analysts due to his work as head of Opinion at ARA. Perhaps it was inevitable that concern for the direction of the world would be the guiding thread of his stories, which, with intelligence and wit, he takes towards political fiction and the literature of the unusual. Elephants (Empúries) is his literary debut and has earned him the 2024 Mercè Rodoreda Award. This Monday he will present it at the Ona bookstore (7 pm). His talent has burst the seams of an elephantine discretion.

There is a very important meeting in Paris today at 4pm. French President Emmanuel Macron has urgently summoned the heads of government of Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland and Denmark, as well as the President of the European Commission and the Secretary General of NATO, to the Elysée Palace to see what Europe's response is to the announcement of the The United States to open peace talks in Ukraine without Ukraine and without Europe: Trump-Putin talks in Saudi Arabia. Today's meeting was called after the speech given in Munich on Friday by US Vice President JD Vance, who left European governments in a state of shock because he said that Europe's problem was not Russia or China, but the lack of courage of European governments in the face of immigration and the defence of traditional values, exactly the same thing.

The two million pro-independence votes in the 2017 elections (and the 1-O referendum) marked a historic milestone that defines an era that has already been surpassed. The Process is over and, while the main actors try to catch their breath – and put an end to the consequences of state repression – the movement is clearly in free fall. Last year's elections were the most convincing demonstration: in the Catalan elections, 700,000 votes were lost compared to 2017 (and almost 100,000 compared to those of 2021, in the midst of a pandemic) and in the European elections, 1 million votes compared to the new weeks that represent those of 2019.

The first major move to try to overcome division within the pro-independence camp after the public disagreements on Catalonia Day took place this Tuesday at the Palau de la Generalitat and served mainly to confirm the gulf separating Catalan president Pere Aragonès's strategy from the Catalan National Assembly's (ANC). The head of the Government has summoned this campaigning organisation, alongside Òmnium Cultural and Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI), to rebuild bridges, but the impression is that it will not be easy to find common ground. The ANC went to the meeting with a proposal under its arm: "making independence effective" in the second half of 2023, an idea that has been automatically dismissed by Aragonès. "The conditions do not exist to move forward with such a proposal, and everybody knows this," said Presidency minister Laura Vilagrà.

Like the pottery he learned to do in prison, Jordi Cuixart (Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, 1975) has shaped life with his own hands. He discovered culture when he opened the door of his uncle's bookshop; at 16 he picked up a broom in a workshop and earnt his first salary, which he spent becoming a member of Amnesty International. He declared himself a conscientious objector and at the age of 28, already a graduate in industrial design, he opened his own company: Aranow, a packaging company. In the 2000s, his name was often heard in pro-sovereignty circles. It was said that he was a successful businessman who gave money to organisations to help the cause. That's how Oriol Junqueras and Elisenda Paluzie met him in 2007: they were starting the Sobirania i Progrés platform and knocked on his door looking for funding. An example: the cars that transported the international observers in the 2011 Barcelona Decideix consultation were covered by a vinyl that Cuixart's company provided free of charge.

As it celebrates its 60th anniversary, Òmnium is about to reach 200,000 members, has a budget of €10m, 70% of which it allocates to Catalan language projects and its president, Jordi Cuixart, is a political rock star. What can go wrong? Much of the rest. That's why Cuixart has gone from serious to tender in his book Aprenentatges i una proposta [Lessons learned and a proposal] (Ara Llibres) and warns that without a street mobilisation that puts pressure on Catalan and Spanish politicians there will be no independence.

The president of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart (Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, 1975), receives ARA in the town of les Garrigues, where he is with his family after regaining his freedom.

Òmnium Cultural joins the ANC in the pressure of civil society to try to unblock in extremis the formation of a pro-independence government in Catalonia. At an event organised by the organisation at La Farga in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat in the presence of the acting president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and other representatives of ERC, JxCat, the CUP and the Comuns, Jordi Cuixart called for an end to the dynamics of "attrition" and "hyper-tacticism" and for a return to a "sense of state" and "generosity" in favour of a "shared strategy" for all pro-independence movements, which he described as "urgent". "All spaces are essential", he added. Under the watchful eye of personalities such as the President of the Parliament, Laura Borràs, her predecessor in the post, Roger Torrent, and the former President of the Generalitat, Quim Torra, as well as representatives of the ANC and the AMI and the main trade unions, employers and social organisations, Cuixart has riveted the nail on the coffin by warning of the "irreversible" consequences for parties, institutions and citizens in general of a failure of the negotiations that ends with the call for new elections.

The foreseeable refusal of the PSOE to consider an amnesty does not make the the initiative that this Tuesday took to the Spanish Parliament the Catalan pro-independence parties, at the initiative of Òmnium Cultural devoid of sense. On the contrary. Insisting and staging in Madrid this possibility of effective détente is a necessary civic and political gesture, both towards Catalan society and international public opinion. In Catalonia, the dwindling hard core of the unionist right is very much alone in defending the repressive punishment of prisoners, exiles and the thousands of people affected by the various legal cases underway. A different feeling prevails among socialist voters. The desire for détente is widely shared beyond the pro-independence movement. More than turning the page, as socialist candidate Salvador Illa defended in the campaign, what the bulk of the population wants is to give real dialogue a chance. What the vast majority of Catalans want is to turn the page on the spirit of revenge, on the duality between winners and losers. What the people want is, in short, for politics to return, and for it to return without falling into the naivety of magical solutions on either side. By means of masterstrokes, independentism alienates many people and deactivates sympathy. And vice versa: through judicial repression, independentism will not disappear, but rather be strengthened. This is what the PSOE should understand sooner rather than later, and have the courage to act accordingly.