The screenwriter and humorist Maria Rovira, also known as Oye Sherman, believes we should rethink tourism: “We Barcelonians who go away should think about the logic we suffer in the city all year round and ask ourselves if we are becoming gentrifying agents in other towns and cities”.Following this reflection, he chooses cinemas as his favorite place, a cool space with air conditioning and a window to the world. He suggests going to the cinemas, “perhaps this way we can manage to keep them alive until September and they don’t become a supermarket, a clothing store or an establishment without history or personality”. He recalls that in his neighborhood, more than ten years ago, the Lauren Horta cinema closed, which became a Condis.To the screenwriter, who this summer is making a series of film recommendations in Retorn al videoclub by ARA, she also likes to go to Filmoteca, Verdi cinemas and Renoir Floridablanca: “Actually I like them all. Balmes is huge, it looks like a kind of space shuttle”. She admits she is not one of those people who prefer to watch a film practically alone in the room, she prefers to experience the screening as a collective experience, beyond the people she might go with, “as long as it coincides with a civilized audience”. This special connection is usually with films shown at festivals: “It's a unique experience, which I do much less often than I'd like. Normally, premieres coincide with a time slot when I'm working, on television, or performing a gig.” Despite this, he usually checks the schedules for IN-EDIT Barcelona, D'A, or DocsBarcelona, which he particularly likes. Let's see if he can combine it to go: “This year I was at Docs, a real triumph.”For years I had gone to the cinema a lot, “it's the typical thing that I don't do as much as I would like and I intend to correct it,” she comments. She also considers the option of the cinema when she is in a city that is not her own, especially if she is doing tourism, it is summer and it is hot: “It is the perfect time to stop, rest and have an interesting experience besides the film: seeing what the cinemas are like and the people who go there is another way to get to know places”. When she manages to go to the cinema, she is one of those who buys tickets in advance, "it's already exceptional enough to venture out and have to watch it from the corner." Remembering, she recalls when she saw Mullholland drive from the side front row, a disaster. If she can choose, no morning or very late sessions, as she tends to fall asleep, and preferably in the original version, "although as a child I watched them dubbed." When she was a little girl and discovered voice actors, she was very excited to know that Pep Anton Muñoz voiced many bad Disney characters or that Ross from Friends and Timon from The Lion King were the same voice.

The book we are reviewing here was to be titled There has to be a better way to do this, that the author, comedian Maria Rovira (Barcelona, 1990), he says it's a mantra that accompanies him. But that title fell in favor of Garland, which according to the dictionary of the Institute of Catalan Studies is a chain of flowers, of braided foliage, that is hung as an ornament; and whoever says flowers, says banners or whatever. It is based on this idea of a string of memories and thoughts that we must read this book, which bears the subtitle "Words, losses and other celebrations".

Oye Sherman (Maria Rovira) tells Àlex Gutiérrez that “anything you say out of pure common sense is woke”. In fact, just using the first part of the subject of the sentence could title an article, and even a whole book: “Anything you say”.Literally, what the scoundrels say now. And it is that things are like this: someone says “Good morning” and immediately someone jumps in with “Good morning will be for you, how you can tell you live off the system”, or with “Good morning? Don't you see it's raining?”. We have fully integrated that the cultural battle is played out at every turn and that, today, more important than what is said is who says it. Result: either you stop saying “Good morning”, in which case a voice is lost in the public square, or you continue saying it because you don't give a damn what the bitter ones, the professional offenders, or the haters say, in which case the incentive for debate in the same square is lost.It is also true that it is not the same anything you say as saying anything. If you send a primary message, you can't normally expect an elaborate response. Provocateurs are in their element. You only have to listen to the immense majority of political messages to see that they are constructed to annoy the adversary and not to leave them indifferent, and of course, if you throw a stone with the intention of hitting the mark, there will be a queue to pick it up and throw it back at you.We have lost the taste for considering the argument that tests ours, because this makes us feel insecure and, on the other hand, we have incorporated the taste for reading between the lines, because this makes us feel clever. So we end up overinterpreting any message, and naturally humor and irony have passed on to a better life. Despite everything, and more so today, Easter Monday, may we have a good day.

From Maria Rovira, also known as Oye Sherman on stage, we knew she was tremendously witty and fun thanks to her monologues and media appearances. With Garlanda, her first book, she proves that she can also channel beauty and sensitivity through words, without ceasing to make the reader smile, and also laugh, with her intelligent and imaginative gaze. Edited by Blackie Books, it arrives in bookstores on April 8.