With the Catalan Book Week finished with record figures, both in terms of the number of visitors and the volume of sales, this weekend the baton of literary fairs is taken up by the already established Liberisliber in Besalú, with a "full capacity" in the central squares of Sant Pere and the Cloister of this tourist town in La Garrotxa, where stalls from a total of 69 independent publishing labels will be set up, and with a dense program of activities that seek to promote a taste for reading. To contribute its "grain of sand" to achieving this goal, and "given the worrying situation revealed by the latest reports on reading", Liberisliber has set out to work beyond the Besalú fair and has announced the launch, for the end of October, of the digital resource Lektur.cat: a recipe book in which, with the help of illustrators such as Dani Torrent or Anna Font, various and original strategies are proposed to encourage children and adults to read and to guide them in choosing their reading material.

The Catalan Book Week closed this Sunday its 44th edition with more than 130,000 visitors, 8,000 more than last year, and a turnover that will reach one million euros, 12% more than a year ago, pending the final figures. The organization assures that, taking into account the absolute sales data, the 2026 edition has been the best in the history of the Week. "We have experienced the best edition of the Week in its entire history, a fact that demonstrates the good work done in previous years and reaffirms the vitality of the book in Catalan, and we are already starting to think about the 45th edition so that it can once again be a great celebration of books and culture," asserted the presidentof Editors.cat, Oriol Magrinyà.

Granted that the Eixample is full of streets dedicated to the exploits of the soldiers of the Crown of Aragon –from Calabria to Sardinia and from Corsica to Aragon–, but if today a taxi driver is looking for Almogavars, they shouldn't head towards Razzmatazz but towards the Arc de Triomf, at the Catalan Book Week. This is what the Valencian sociolinguist Toni Mollà says, who presents The languages of tomorrow (Bromera) on a crowded afternoon of La Mercè dedicated to Catalan. "Surely those of us here are staunch Almogavars, but there are global linguistic uses that we should take into account when designing official and non-official linguistic policies," he warns. He argues that Catalan will only be a language of tomorrow if it moves out of the school and folkloric environment and adapts to what is structural: capitalism, globalization, and algorithms. This is in addition to maintaining the individual linguistic loyalty of speakers.

"Literature serves to say that, for the racist and unsympathetic piece of shit country that we are being left with, demographic replacement is welcome. It's already late!", said Biel Mesquida this Saturday during the inauguration of the 44th Catalan Book Week.The poet and writer, born in Castelló de la Plana in 1947, has spent decades defending freedom in all its nuances, and today his message has also claimed “insurrection”: "I have not come to bring you peace, but struggle; I have not come to bring you well-being, but insurrection. Literature has always been on the front line of humanizing struggles, against the trampling of rights, against ignorance, for wisdom, and for the practice of people's happiness", asserted the poet, who also sang a cappella the first stanza of Bella Ciao.

Year after year, the Week of Catalan Books is growing in every sense. In 2025, sales figures climbed to a record 820,000 euros – 15% more than the previous edition – it received more than 100,000 visitors and occupied 8,900 m², with 94 stands, 312 exhibitors, and the presence of 265 publishing houses from all Catalan-speaking territories. This year, the venue on Passeig Lluís Companys in Barcelona — a location the Week reclaimed during the America's Cup year, due to the sporting competition which prevented it from being held at Moll de la Fusta — will expand to 9,000 m², will feature 98 stands, 332 exhibitors, and 282 publishing houses.

The writer and journalist Ramon Solsona (Barcelona, 1950) has always defined himself as a "worker" of Catalan letters; a profession that the author compares to that of a miner:

One of the fruits of this year's harvest after wandering among the stalls of the Catalan Book Week was the novel by Grazia Deledda Honorable soulsPublished by Ela Geminada. Until now, almost two months later, I hadn't had the chance to read it, and I've discovered that it's an edition that includes a surprise gift, which is always appreciated.

Women's sport has become a central focus of current events. Its presence in Catalan newscasts has increased tenfold in the last decade and, although still far from parity, it already represents 30.6% of sports broadcasts, according to the Catalan Government's Plan to Promote Women's Sport in Catalonia 2024-2030. A comparison between the 1900 and 2024 Paris Olympics shows the extent to which the situation of women in professional sport has changed: at the 1900 Paris Olympics—the first to admit women—women athletes accounted for 2.2% of participants; by 2024, female competitors represented 50%.

If you have the chance to stop by the Disseny Hub Barcelona this weekend, you can still visit the exhibition Miguel Milán. (Pre)industrial designer, fantastic. In addition to showing iconic works by the creator (you'll want it all), it explores his life and career, highlighting a very artisanal and respectful way of working, both with materials and crafts. There's a kind of "Milan philosophy," about the whys and hows of the objects he designed, which is also very well explained through a video in which he himself appears talking to several people. My favorite moment is when he talks about benches (he designed many). "I really believe in the bench as an element of communication," said Milan. "When you're on a bench, you're forced to say good morning." It's true that the conversation might end up on a good day, and quite a lot, he also added that, but I loved that way of conceiving a bench. I left the DHUB with a book by Milan under my arm and thinking, precisely, about the Week of the Book in Catalan.

Last year, since the America's Cup took priority, Book Week was moved from the Muelle de la Madera to Paseo Lluís Companys. Going there now, I thought about that hierarchy in relation to the fate Trump envisions for Gaza and its population once subjugated: to dedicate them to tourism.

Standing at a stall during Catalan Book Week, I discover, to our mutual delight, my secondary school language and literature teachers. They're chatting with the writer Oriol Molas, another former student. "We come every year. We're here at ten in the morning, we're the first ones," they confess with amusement, even though they're coming all the way from Torelló (Osona). "We've already selected the stalls and publishers we want to see." They're loaded with books. How lucky I was, I think, to see them as passionate about literature as they were when they taught us. They've just retired after more than forty years of teaching at the Sant Miquel dels Sants School in Vic. They're a wealth of experience. Tell me the truth, are we really that bad?

Year after year the Catalan Book Week It continues to grow: each edition—this year's will mark its 43rd—increases visitors and surpasses sales from the previous one. With last year's change of location, from the Muelle de la Madera to Passeig Lluís Companys, the Week broke the bad omens (it left the old port of Barcelona and was delayed a few weeks due to the America's Cup) and managed to break its own record once again: it almost doubled its attendance, going from 0,000 to 20% more than in 2023, which meant going from 600,000 to 720,000 euros.

The great festival of Catalan literature, one of the most important cultural events in the Catalan capital, once again fills Passeig Lluís Companys with readers, publishers, booksellers, and authors. From Friday, September 19th to Sunday, September 28th, Barcelona will host a new edition of Catalan Book Week, an opportunity for book lovers to buy books and also to meet the authors. The celebration of the Week is presented, once again, as a Catalan book festival, which will feature author presentations and signings, conversations and roundtables, poetry recitals and theater evenings, literary tours and podcasts, among other activities.

Year after year, Catalan Book Week continues to grow: each edition—this year's edition will be the 43rd—increases visitors and surpasses sales from the previous one. With the change of location last year, the Muelle de la Madera on Paseo Lluís Companys, the Week once again broke its own record: it went from 60,000 to 100,000 visitors, and earned 20% more than in 2023, which meant going from 600,000 to 720,000 euros.

The writer's career paths Andreu Martín (Barcelona, 1949) and journalist David Guzman (Barcelona, 1978) have been recognized by the Catalan Book WeekThe fair will be held from September 19th to 28th on Passeig Lluís Companys, a location that was tested last year and yielded positive results, with almost 100,000 visitors. "We've experienced enormous growth and brought Catalan books to the city center," said Ilya Pérdigo, president of the Catalan Language Publishers Association and the event's organizer, on Tuesday. In the next edition, the Week will have more booths, a greater presence of labels, and more exhibitors. "These are record numbers. We're convinced it's a major national event, and we want to reflect that," said Cristina Domènech, the initiative's director. In addition to the booths, new spaces will be added, such as a reading corner and a language tent, "to improve the visitor experience."