The Catalan Book Week is not satisfied with the 9,000 m² it occupies at the Passeig Lluís Companys in Barcelona until Sunday and is expanding into some activities outside the venue, such as the cocktail party celebrating the 50 years of La Magrana hosted at the Maritime Museum, with the presence of some of the authors who make up the current catalog of the label, such as Montse Virgili, David Moragas, Núria Perpinyà, Aina Gatnau, and M. Mercè Cuartiella. Also Cristina Genebat, winner of the first edition of the Lo Somni award with Sorra, who shortly before the start of the party could not find, like other authors from the house, which entrance to the museum to use. "Don't worry, sooner or later we will find the way," the novelist Aniol Florensa, whom she had just met, told her rightly, shortly before meeting a future author of the house, Paula Vidal, who will debut at La Magrana at the beginning of 2027.

The literary resumption (the rentrée(if you prefer the Gallicism) has brought new books by Gabriel Janer Manila, Antonia Vicens, and Antoni Vidal Ferrando to the bookstores. The three have in common that they are members of the same generation and that they are from Mallorca, but above all, they are three great authors of contemporary Catalan literature.

In Take up your cross, new collection of poems byAntonia Vicens (Santanyí, 1941), "echoes of a bloody battle are felt everywhere," tanks advance with solitary executioners inside, and birds of prey "tear out the eyes of combatants" to make their nests. The omnipresence of struggle, blood, and war coexists with the human spirit of survival and the vindication of words like "redemption" and "memory." Once again, the Mallorcan author manages to move the reader with a compact and dense collection of verses published by LaBreu, as well as All the horses (2017) and Father, what do we do with the dead mother? (2020).