Every debut novelist is expected to have a voice. They're also expected to have a technique, a style, a skill, or the ability to create memorable characters, but what will make them stand out from the crowd is whether they've managed to offer a different, original introduction. If we were right now inside Etna Miró's novel (Barcelona, ​​2001), "different" and "original" would be in italics to emphasize irony and detachment, two of the mechanisms the author uses most effectively to describe a group of Barcelona residents—those she has had the brilliant idea of ​​creating—who are students of philology, literature, or political science. Like a swarm buzzing with great social intelligence around the hive formed by the islands of Ildefons Cerdà, they come and go, chatting about everything except money, as if they were always in front of an audience. What isn't foreseen is that they will have "spiritual crises," and that's what happens to the novel's protagonist, Amelia de las Camelias, a charmingly ornate, old-fashioned name, an obvious literary reference. The one who has pushed her into it is Amelia herself, who has put on a beautiful shell, but doesn't realize it's empty: she's an Emma Bovary who, no matter how much she reads, doesn't grasp a single one of life's ironies.

This Sant Jordi, in Girona's Plaça Catalunya, there will be a new book stall representing the new generation of Girona publishers. It is formed by Cap de Brot and Gata Maula, two young independent publishing houses founded this year with a similar purpose: to publish good books in Catalan and to do so and promote it from Girona. Nearby, heading towards La Rambla, Laia Regincós will be at the Ela Geminada stall. Despite being only thirty years old, she has been managing the business for six years. de facto This publishing house was founded in 2011, but this will be the first to do so as an owner. groupie She sat in the front row of the presentation of the two publishing houses. "For many years, I felt very alone," she says. Now, far from competing with each other, they are advocating for alliances and helping each other where necessary.

Although Josep Piera (Beniopa, 1947) considers himself above all a poet, he has left a handful of memorable prose books, among them The green cliff (Destino, 1982) –with which he won the award Josep Pla–, Greek Summer (Destiny, 1985) and This is where it all ends (Ediciones 62, 1993), which the young publishing house Cabo de Brot has just republished in a corrected and expanded version. "The epilogue that Josep has now written has made us cry with emotion," admits Josep Maria Codina, who together with Germán Bartolomé and Judit Pujol has just launched a project that has already presented its first three titles: Birds of clay, of Santiago Rusiñol; The mark of the hook, by Laura G. Ortensi, and This is where it all ends.

Cap de Brot is the name of a new literary publishing house based in Girona, which publishes books in Catalan under a clear motto: "A publishing house that is not afraid." It will not be, because it is heading out to readers with three excellent but far from obvious books: the second book of poems by Laura G. Ortensi, an excellent young poet, entitled The mark of the hook, and two recoveries of classics, one deceased and one very much alive: Birds of clay, by Santiago Rusiñol, and This is where it all ends, by Josep Piera. Titles by Carme Guasch, Lluís Lucero Comas and Giordano Andriola, translated by Josep Domènech Ponsatí, will follow shortly. The books that come out of this Cape of Brot are beautiful, well designed, even neat, and make for good reading and good company.