More than sixty Catalan authors They have traveled to Mexico to represent Barcelona at the 39th International Book Fair (FIL) From Guadalajara, where the city is the guest of honor. Ten of the participants summarize their journey across the Atlantic in their own words.

With the Guadalajara International Book Fair inauguratedThe writer Javier Cercas kicked off the literary season yesterday in a packed auditorium at the Barcelona pavilion, the city where he has lived for twenty-five years, although most people still think he lives in Girona. He divides his time between the Alt Empordà region and the Catalan capital. In the capital of Jalisco, he gathered a devoted and enthusiastic audience.It's coming, it's coming, how exciting!"Announced an admirer sitting in the second row. Most had attended the previous session to secure a place at the talk by the author who rose to worldwide fame with Soldiers of Salamis when he was 39 years old, and now, at 63, coinciding with the death of Pope Francis, he has brought out God's madman at the end of the world.

Reading and loving. Sant Jordi could be summed up in these two beautiful words. A holiday celebrated with literature and love, in April, just as the trees begin to bud and the days become decidedly longer, is unbeatable. Sant Jordi is a collective explosion but also personal, a day that has a score that everyone can interpret by introducing their own variations.

It was very difficult to endure a whole hour without speaking for a minute about Catalan or Catalonia in a conversation that the Catalan government had decided to dedicate to Sant Jordi, but that silence ended up being precisely the political message of the day. Since Salvador Illa announced that he would record a podcast with Javier Cercas to celebrate World Book Day, there has been a certain uproar. It was the first time in history that a president of the Generalitat (Catalan government) broke institutional neutrality by ingratiating himself with a specific writer, and there was criticism for all tastes. From a purely commercial point of view, promoting an author of bestsellers over other, more independent names and labels. From the perspective of political narrative, choosing one of the most actively belligerent voices in recent years against the Trial clashed with the appeals to the dullness and harmony that are the house's trademark. From the perspective of linguistic awareness, investing the presidency's capital to promote a book in Spanish doesn't seem entirely consistent with combating the alarming decline of Catalan. In a government that makes a virtue of muting, Cercas's election is one of the most explicit declarations of political program that have been made recently. But instead of attacking this string of groundbreaking controversies floating around, Isla and Cercas have repeated each and every one of the comfortable clichés surrounding Pope Francis and Donald Trump; and here's peace, then glory.

The Generalitat (Catalan government) announces a new activity for the eve of Sant Jordi at the Palau de la Generalitat. The City Council has institutionalized the Sant Jordi proclamation on the afternoon of the 22nd (This year with Mexican Cristina Rivera Garza) and the Sant Jordi dialogues in the city libraries a few weeks before, the Generalitat will organize on April 22 at the Saló de Sant Jordi The voices of Sant Jordi, a day with four conversations between figures from the world of thought and literature in podcast format. The central conversation will be between President Salvador Illa and Javier Cercas, who will talk about traditions, culture, and Sant Jordi, moderated by Agnès Marquès (12:15 p.m.). The others are between Eloy Fernández Porta and Marina Garcés (10:30 a.m.), Maite Carranza and Jordi Puntí (4:00 p.m.), and Alicia Kopf and Monika Zgustová (5:30 p.m.).

After writing three thrillers starring a squad boy, Javier Cercas (Ibahernando, 1962) offers a unique variation in his new book, in which the detective is the author himself and the person under investigation is none other than Pope Francis. God's Fool at the End of the World –published by Random House Literature, after a period of the author in Planeta that began with Terra Alta (2019) – explains the writer's trip to Mongolia as part of the courtship of the supreme pontiff with the aim of constructing an in-depth portrait. "I have had the privilege of being the first writer to whom the Vatican has opened its doors to write a book," he says. "When they made the proposal to me, I immediately said to them: 'Don't you know that I am a dangerous guy?' But they didn't back down either. In fact, I have had absolute freedom to write whatever I wanted. Not even what I wanted. Not even. if it is read by the Vatican, they don't decide to excommunicate me."