According to what Ortega y Gasset told Josep Pla, and what the latter wrote in 1964 when Josep Carner was already old (he died in 1970), "The Catalan who has written best in Catalan of all time is José Carner"Carner in Spanish? Yes, of course. In fact, due to the circumstances of his exile, one of his most emblematic works, the great poem Nabi, The poem, consisting of 1,446 verses, was first published in Spanish in 1940. It was not a translation, but the author's own version, written while he was living in Mexico for six years before settling permanently in Brussels.

"The omnipotent Jaume Coll Llinàs, / professor emeritus of the UB, / executor of a legacy rotting in the open, / has created the Carner Chair for us, / where, as the perspicacious introducer that he is, / of ecdotic science to the homeland, / he teaches fear to the plant text." Thus begins one of the satirical poems written "in the manner" of the poet Josep Carner (1884-1970) and focused on criticizing the current dissemination of the work of the so-called Prince of Poets. It was written by a certain Norbert Planagumà i Mieres in One and double, the mysterious unpublished work that the ARA recently received. "Norbert Planagumà is a pseudonym that covers four individuals who refuse to show their faces," can be read in the prologue, which is entitled Instruction sheet–. Whether this is a boring act of cowardice is left to the discretion of each reader, who is undoubtedly more impartial than we are. Whether you believe us or not, if we remain anonymous it is more for reasons of convenience, because for the moment we prefer to live in bad company than reside in a prison. Neither can certain truths be proclaimed with impunity, nor do we have the vocation to go down in history as heroes.

Catalonia in 1925, a century ago, was a country of contrasts, from ideal Noucentisme to revolutionary radicalism. The cliché works: "sign and speed"" (sanity and rapture). This May marks the centenary of the attempted assassination of King Alfonso XIII, the Garraf Plot, and also of the publication of The bonhomies, a collection of newspaper articles by Josep Carner in The Voice of CataloniaBehind the plot lay the long shadow of the future president Macià; behind the delightful book lay the literary heartbeat of the "prince of Catalan poets." A self-made prince, the son of an orderly middle class: his father was an editor of the Carlist newspaper The Catalan Post Office. It was the time of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and everyone tried to escape it as best they could.

Yes, today begins the month that kills the old woman at the edge of the fire and the young woman if she can… It is the saying that everyone knows or perhaps knew. Because now everything is different. Words and sayings are lost as so many other things are lost. What is not lost is the merriment and, therefore, the Carnival is still very much alive. People dress up as what they are not or what they would like to be. Streets and floats are made in the image and likeness of other places and other countries. Above all, the Carnival of Rio de Janeiro is imitated and its translations are nostrades, Sitges, Vilanova… Now my town, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, is boiling with emotion and nerves. Since Christmas people have been rehearsing choreographies and the last kicks have been given to the costumes. And who says kicks, says brushstrokes of glue, because, who is there still sewing? The Carnival groups are almost ready. There are those who take a holiday because they have to drive a float, there are those who take it because they have to play music in their gang… The merrymaking, the drinking, the debauchery begins. It should not last long, because next Wednesday begins Holy Lent. It is Ash Wednesday and Christians will go to the parish to have the imprint of ashes made on their foreheads (pulvis eris et in pulverem reversed, you are dust and dust you will return to) and the forty days of penitence will begin that will last until Easter. The Thursday before this Ash Wednesday is or was Fat Thursday. One had to take advantage of the fact that one could still eat pork, and on the table appeared the sausage omelettes, the egg sausage and the fat cakes. Now who celebrates it? And if someone does, it is a mere residual celebration, cultural, traditional, let's say what we want, but without any sense. Because all year round we eat whatever we want! Be it Thursday or Friday.