Dear friend and colleague Ferran Torrent,

Valencian writer Ferran Torrent has decided to resign to the highest award for Valencian literature that he received last year. He did so in a letter to the Valencian president, Carlos Mazón, in which he laments the "academic and institutional drift that is increasingly less respectful of the Valencian language." Torrent argues that, "given the direction the Consell has taken," he feels "forced to renounce the award."

Ferran Torrent (Sedaví, 1951), had he been born in the United States of Truman or Eisenhower and not in the Valencian Country crushed by the reactionary Castilianist boot of Francoism, could have had, like so many American writers of his generation, a double or triple literary career, with the film holding important positions in the field of journalism. The fact of being part of a linguistic-cultural system that is colonially minorised and interfered with – without an audiovisual industry worthy of the name and with precarious journalism – has meant that Torrent has had to dedicate himself almost exclusively to writing novels. Which is good, but it is also a shame. Because reading him it is clear that he has all the virtues of a certain American cinema of classical production and powerfully efficient results: plots that are wrapped but plausible, charismatic characters – even the most despicable ones –, strong and fast dialogues, and also a sense of existential adventure, a sense of spectacle and a sense of spectacle.