The Comanegra publishing house publishes Gaudí, the Sagrada Familia and ecstasy, a hybrid format between comic and illustrated book signed by the Madrid-based screenwriter Salva Rubio and the Argentinian illustrator Agustín Comotto that arrives simultaneously in Catalan, Spanish and English: a historic milestone for the Barcelona-based publisher, which had never before published simultaneously in three languages.

The history of Catalan literature is full of novels featuring Passeig de Gràcia, from Private life, by José María de Sagarra, until Broken mirror, of Mercedes Rodoreda, and The manufacturerby Dolors Monserdà. Until now, however, no fiction had taken place almost exclusively in one location. Roger Bastida (Hospitalet de Llobregat, 1990) has set himself the challenge in Passeig de Gràcia. Story of a familyFocusing on the destinies of three Catalan families—one noble, one bourgeois, and one working-class—over the last two centuries, the jury of the Santa Eulàlia Novel Prize has decided to award it. Organized by Comanegra and Àfora Focus Edicions for the past four years and endowed with 25,000 euros, the Santa Eulàlia Prize recognizes the best novel about Barcelona. In this case, the award will help to discover the young voice of Roger Bastida, who has already published three historical novels. The lizard's gaze (2017), The long festival (2020) and Under the shadow of the Washingtonia (2023), all three published by Columna. A graduate in art history, Bastida lives in Madrid, where he works as a historical consultant on series such as Temperance, Jan, Queen Victoria Eugenie and Sira He is also a professor of the history of clothing applied to costume design for film and television at ECAM (Madrid Film and Audiovisual School). "Even though he's such a young author, good literature is ageless," says Alba Cayón of Comanegra.

This tetralogy was, for Thomas MannThe project of his life. It occupied him throughout his later years, because he began writing the book in 1926 and did not finish it until 1943. He had published only two years before the initial deadline. The Magic Mountain, and four after the final, Doctor FaustusMore than 120 years earlier, Goethe had also been fascinated by the biblical story of Joseph and had wanted to give it his own interpretation, but he was unsuccessful. This became an inspiration for Mann, who did complete his work (he considered it a "divine picaresque novel"). Today we are fortunate to be able to read the first two books of the tetralogy, in a very thorough translation by Ramon Monton. Let me also applaud his edition: free of typos and sloppy work, something unfortunately rare in Catalan publishing.

When she was just a child, Kapka Kassabova (Sofia, 1973) spent her summers with her family in a seemingly idyllic village in southern Bulgaria called Michurin during the Soviet era (now Tsarevo). "I could consider myself privileged, because with my parents, who were scientists, we went on vacation, while many of the children I knew spent their summers working in the tobacco fields," she recalls now, coinciding with the publication of the first Catalan translation of one of her books. Border (Comanegra, 2025; translation by Ariadna Pous), which presented at the CCCB Kosmopolis festival“At that time, I couldn’t have known that in the villages of the so-called Red Riviera, one out of every two waiters worked for the Bulgarian State Security, and that there were also many KGB and Stasi agents secretly watching the East German vacationers: some of them were making their way through the forest, hoping for a new life far from communism,” she explains.

"A child is a strange existence. You know they will be tied to you forever. Like a father and a mother," he writes. Teresa Colom (La Seu d'Urgell, 1973) in Everything happened at once (Comanegra). The writer and poet's first memoir is a reunion with her parents during childhood and, at the same time, a journey through the tortuous paths of a family filled with pain. Colón recounts her life with five siblings, a lying and jealous father, and a mother clinging to him and isolated from the world. Constructed from memories and filled with evocative imagery, Everything happened at once It is a family story that reflects how the deepest wounds can be passed down from generation to generation.

"I'm used to releasing a finished work with a shrug of resignation, with no confidence in its potential for dissemination," he wrote. Thomas Mann (Lübeck, 1875 - Zurich, 1955) to Summary of my life, in Spanish in Nórdica, translated by Isabel Hernández. Mann wrote this short text – it doesn't exceed a hundred pages – on the occasion of being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, still in the midst of the international expansion of The Magic Mountain, which in the author's words had achieved "a curious success", "less epic" than that of his "youth novel", The Buddenbrooks (1901; in Catalan in Navona, translated by Joan Fontcuberta): at just 25 years old, Mann had already become a literary star, and between this book and The Magic Mountain (1924; in Catalan to Navona, translated by Carme Gala) had built a robust literary career, displayed both in novels and in stories and essays.

During election campaigns, all politicians make promises. Some seem feasible and are credible to voters, but the politicians themselves already know they won't be able or willing to keep them. Colossal promises, at the very least, denote determination, courage, and commitment on the part of the person making them. Rodrigo Duterte campaigned to become the new president of the Philippines, no one believed he could or would keep the barbaric promises he repeated at every rally and in every interview to restore order and security by summarily executing as many drug dealers and junkies as he could. Once he came to power in 2016, Duterte did keep his promise. And the killing began.

It is not the first time that Victor Garcia Tur (Barcelona, ​​​​1981) works with Hitchcockian materials. In The birds (2015), his first novel, already made variations based on the homonymous film by the English filmmaker, based on the story of Daphne du Maurier. He took some plot motifs, part of the cast of characters, the general atmosphere and symbolic weight, and created a work of his own that, with the original, had as many points in common (an inexplicable change in the natural environment causes anguish and tension in the human landscape) that Turco felt and made specular divergences (Hitchcock is nowhere to be found). The merit of the novel is that it was able to play with the raw material without subordinating itself to it. Hitchcock was the starting point, a reference, not an idol to emulate or simply pay homage to.

I sometimes struggle with the term "necessary" applied to culture: a necessary book, a necessary play, a necessary concert. From time to time, it seems to me that we burden culture with this responsibility too much, and that, in doing so, we forget about fun and entertainment for its own sake, about reading or watching a movie for the sheer pleasure of it, with no other goal than having a good time. This week I recommended the novel The life of bookseller AJ Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin (Periscopio; translation by Octavi Gil Pujol), saying that it's "pleasant to read." Someone asked me: "That means you didn't like it, did it?" I was surprised. Is it a bad thing to say that a book is pleasant? I could also say that it entertained me, because that's the absolute truth: I read it almost in one sitting. Is it a book that will remain forever in my memory? No. Did I enjoy reading it? Yes, because it's a novel...pleasant to read.

The publication of the volume of short theatre collected in Intermission(s) (Comanegra) also gathered, this Monday night at the Ona bookstore, one dream team of contemporary Catalan dramaturgy. Perhaps because the space was relaxed, perhaps because the authors already have their bellies full, the meeting served to shoot with bullets against the main problems of a sector of artists that is not very visible but, on the other hand, very important culturally, and even economically.