Carles Rius Çafó and Ildefons Falcons (I)

In the last two months I have been flying a lot, those very long flights that give me the opportunity to finish long and interesting books. Two of those books were written by Barcelona authors. The originals were written in Spanish (not in Catalan), although I decided to read one of them, The Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefolso Falcones in its wonderful translation to Catalan, since I thought it would allow me to get immersed much more easily in the medieval Catalonia. In general, I always try to read books in their original versions, but this time, reading The Cathedral of the Sea in Catalan was really a plus.

I never wrote in the past about the Frankfurt book fair. Now with the perspective that time provides, I have to admit that, in my opinion, it was a blunder, no surprise if we take into consideration that Josep Lluis Carod-Rovira was behind the whole thing.

As a purist, I went back to check how the invitation to Catalonia was phrased in the Frankfurt book fair website. There, they clearly stated that the Catalonia culture was invited, not the Catalonia literature, not the Catalan literature, not the literature in Catalan, but the Catalan culture. For me this is Culture generated by Catalans in any language. Not inviting Catalan authors writing in Spanish was, in my opinion, a big error. They should have positioned the Catalan culture as an open culture with excellent contributions in our mother tongue and also in other languages like Spanish. They could have even tried to find Catalans who write in other languages like English, French, German or Swedish (actually, there is afew of us) and give us a booth too. What about me?, I write in English, am I not considered Catalan culture?, apparently not, at least, for Carod-Rovira.

Frankly speaking, I think that the Catalan politicians do not portray the openness of the Catalan society. They should have taken credit for the contributions of all Catalans, independently of the language they use for their artistic creations, while highlighting the strength of the Catalan language which, in theory and due to its size, should be in the list of endangered languages, but which is still alive, kicking and growing.

Going back to Carlos Ruiz Zafón and Ildefonso Falcones, I think that there is a clear reason why they did not write their books in Catalan and the answer is that I think that they do not have a good enough command of the language to produce works of similar quality. They are both my age and at that time, it was forbidden to learn Catalan at school, and we spent years and years learning Spanish grammar and literature (from the "jarchas" to the Archpriest of Hita, from Cervantes to Pio Baroja, but never ever a single author who wrote in Catalan or a single piece of work written in Catalan). Therefore, I assume that they would have struggled (the same as I do, although I do not give up) to write something good in Catalan and they took the easy way out and it paid, since they are now famous and hopefully wealthy.

In one of my future posts, I will explain why, despite being written in Spanish, there is a thick Catalan subtract in those pieces of work, even in Ruiz Zafon's one.