This summer, which many of us have seen fires ravage our forests and where we don't know for sure if what we are experiencing is nature becoming unbalanced or, on the contrary, doing its best to rebalance itself; this summer Editorial Barcino has published a new edition of Liliana, by Apel·les Mestres (Barcelona, 1854-1936), and has given us the opportunity to re-evaluate a writer whom we should all know better. Personally, I would swear I had never read anything by him, although I had seen illustrations by him at the MNAC. I delved into his life a few months ago, when I was preparing the script for a podcast about classic authors that I present, La contracoberta. And since then I have been amazed not only by his pen, but also by everything he knew how to do well: drawing, painting, writing poetry, theatre, prose and music, translating and giving graphic illustration the artistic category it deserves.

"It had been more than 100 years since any book by Teodor Llorente had been published in Catalonia," he says. Oriol Magrinyà, editor of Barcino, who has broken this long hiatus thanks to Poetic Anthology, twelfth volume of the collection EssentialsEdited and with a foreword by the great contemporary specialist on the author, Rafael Roca, the volume commemorates the poet and intellectual who "led the Valencian branch of the Renaixença" through a generous and representative selection of his work, which includes such emblematic poems as The shack, Storm and The three strings of the harpIf the Principality had such a relevant author as Jacint Verdaguer (Folgueroles, 1845 - Barcelona, ​​1902) and the Balearic Islands with the influential presence of Mariano Aguiló (Palma, 1825 - Barcelona, ​​1897), the Valencian Country had a figure as relevant as that of Teodoro Llorente (Valencia, 1836-1911): thanks to his Libretto of verses (1885) A good number of Valencians learned to read in their language throughout much of the 20th century.