PABLO GIL
@ pablogil72
Madrid
Monday, March 8, 2021 - 02:32
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Balance 2020. The publishing miracle in the most difficult year: the sale of books falls only 4% in 2020
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It was the worst year for culture and it was the best year for culture.
"One thing I learned when I was a reporter in Lebanon, in the Balkans or in Eritrea is that the Greek and Latin classics are very comforting: they explain and help," says writer
Arturo Pérez-Reverte
.
"They don't solve the problem for you, but they help you to bear it better. I read them often, because reading Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Tacitus, Suetonius, Virgil or Homer helps to bear a lot of bad things. This year I have also reread them. much much".
It was the worst year for cinemas and the best year for platforms, the worst year for concerts and the best year for Spotify, the worst year for theater and museums, and the best year for reading.
It was the worst year for the business, but we have never needed so much a book, a song, a movie, a series, art, a play, dance ...
EL MUNDO asks 14 creators and the Minister of Culture and Sports two questions: Has culture been more important this year than ever this year?
How did it help you?
"I spent the first two months in absolute nothingness, paralyzed,
I hit rock bottom,
"
Zahara
recalls music
.
"And the culture made me very anxious. I am divorced and when my son's father was with him I had the feeling that I should take the opportunity to read, do yoga, cook cakes ... but everything was hard for me."
And then.
I spent the first two months of the pandemic in absolute nothingness.
I hit rock bottom, and my big savior was Taylor Swift
Zahara
"Then I saw the Taylor Swift
Miss Americana documentary
, she was an artist that I didn't care about, I hadn't heard her, but that was what helped me to
click
. I don't know how to explain it, but I was hooked to death in
1989
, It got me on my feet. And that obsession led me to want to listen to a lot of festive music, although I am quite the opposite. When I'm bad, what I listen to is music that takes me deeper and deeper into drama, and suddenly I became very crazy and I was listening to song after song by Dua Lipa, Caroline Polachek, Miley Cyrus, Charli XCX ...
Taylor Swift has been my great savior
. She made me dance. "
The experiences are linked to each other.
"We danced a lot at home, especially Petit Pop, and in this way my son's anguish would vanish and he felt happy and safe," recalls the writer Irene Vallejo, National Essay Prize winner.
"Those are the happiest memories I have of confinement, the ones that helped us escape the anguish and fear, along with the time to read a story to her at night. We laughed, did a little drama, put on voices, and this way my son reached the pre-sleep relaxation and slept more calmly. It was something very important for me because if I have been a writer it has been because of the stories that my parents read to me at night when I was a child ", adds Vallejo.
"I remember perfectly how the
Odyssey was
read to me
, and many years after that,
Infinity
came out
in a reed
" ...
"
Infinity in a junk
has been one of the books that I have enjoyed the most this year, a book that also makes you want to read more, not to stop reading," says José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, Minister of Culture and Sports.
"In fact
I have read a lot in this time
. I returned to Brines, to 'The Autumn of the Roses', I read the very hard autobiography of our Joan Margarit, 'We who loved Atticus Finch so much', by Javier de Lucas, and Obama's memoirs, but I also saw some series like
Riot Gear
, which I really liked, and I got hooked on
The crown,
"continues the minister.
"Without culture, these difficult months that we have gone through and that we continue to go through would have been much worse. Culture is a central pillar of the social and democratic state that we have, it is a right of citizens, and one of our basic needs, a necessity in the vital sense, that nourishes the intelligence and the spirit ".
"Culture feeds the spirit,"
Rozalén
also says
, using the same words.
"Especially in confinement I devoured books, like the biography of Gloria Fuertes or Gila, and I listened to a lot of records that I had not listened to for a long time, records from my adolescence:
Pájaros de barro
, by Manolo García,
Pafuera cobrañas
, from Bebe,
Agila
, from Extremoduro ... And movies, and many poetry books. ... All that was my lifeline ".
I was not so aware until now of the need to throw a party and dance without thinking about anything else
Rozalén
"When there is no culture, a sick society" continues the recent winner of the Goya for best original song.
"It makes us travel while still, to become other characters, it allows us to escape, which is very important: I was not so aware until now of
the need to have a party
and dance without thinking about anything else."
We dance again, have you noticed?
We continue traveling.
"My way of traveling to my mother, who was 700 kilometers away without knowing if she was going to survive or not working as a sanitary, was to play my childhood songs," says musician
Andrés Suárez
.
"I played Milladoiro, Luar Na Lubre, José Afonso, Franco Battiato or Serrat and connected with my parents on the screen and I was already at home with them. That is the unlimited power of culture!", He continues.
"It's not that culture is important, it's that it's vital. Do you know what it's like to see a mother crying with her mask on for two hours of a concert hugging her daughter? That's what people need. life raft to the theater, to the movies, to books, to music. I would have gone completely crazy without this, and I'm not exaggerating anything, being at home listening to the screams of politicians?
Parentheses open.
Would we go crazy?
It is an expression that several of the interviewees repeat.
This is Celso Arango, president of the Spanish Society of
Psychiatry
and head of that department at the Gregorio Marañón hospital in Madrid.
"One of the greatest dangers to the mental health of the person is chaos. That is why everything that is structure, certainty and order helps any person to organize mentally, and that organization is a fundamental resilience factor," he explains.
"In this sense,
culture has been fundamental this year for people's mental health
, especially during confinement. Introducing cultural components into an agenda that has been completely altered by external causes helps us to have organization and to give structure to our life, like the family that gets together every Friday to watch a movie or a series, or the chapter of the book that you read before going to sleep ".
Do you know that it is not missing on the bedside table in every hospital room?
"A book".
So culture brings order to our life.
"In culture I have not only found a refuge, but a form of order", says the philosopher and musicologist
Ramón Andrés
, author of a very pertinent study called 'The consolation of music'.
"My biography has been quite complicated, and
culture has helped me to harmonize reality and myself
. I speak of culture, not leisure or distraction. Culture is a commitment to acquiring knowledge and thinking, to emerge transformed to listen to music or read a poem. "
What has accompanied you especially in this very complex year?
"Bach's music. He has taught me to think, to organize my ideas and to combat any kind of nostalgia. I have always been fascinated by the 'Musical Offering', for example, or any cantata".
In culture I have not only found a refuge, but a form of order.
My biography has been quite complicated, and culture has helped me to harmonize reality and myself
Ramon Andres
Culture is a refuge, says Ramón Andrés.
"Literature is the refuge value to which we return in times of crisis," says, in another way, the writer Eva García Sáenz de Urturi, the last Planeta Prize.
"I always say that
literature is the gold of culture
."
She found her * refuge in her library: "In 'The Wild Girl', by Delia Owens, in 'Normal People', by Sally Rooney, and in 'Call me by your name', by André Aciman".
It was the best year for culture.
"Culture is a word that comes from Latin and
is originally the action of cultivating,
" recalls the writer and priest Pablo d'Ors.
"Culture has to do with the cultivation of the spirit, of the non-tangible. The pandemic has offered us the possibility of this cultivation, and I took advantage of it a lot, with reading or painting, but also with silence and meditation, which are also culture. I have especially enjoyed reading classics, because sometimes they can offer you another way of telling what happens today, they are universal narratives that explain the human being ".
The pandemic has offered us the possibility of cultivating the spirit, and I took advantage of it a lot with reading, but also with silence and meditation, which are also culture
Pablo d'Ors
"I caught the virus well," recalls actor
Miguel Rellán
, who was hospitalized for 20 days.
"Right away I asked for books. I took the opportunity to finish some of
George Steiner's
remaining things
, and then I continued with many more.
The Nazi plunder
, by Miguel Martorell, which I have taken months to finish because it led me to other references and now I am an expert on the Nazis,
The fury of the kolibrí
, by Cristina Redondo ... I did not stop reading from morning to night during recovery.
I think I read 17 books in 24 days.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte, who is a friend, called me and I told him that I had done the calculation and that at that rate I would have to live 474 years to finish my library.
He told me: "Idiot, that is not done."
Books, movies, virtual tours through museums, songs, series, more books ...
"Culture has been the fuel that has kept us alive in this time. Surely no one has read more books, listened to more music and seen more movies like this last year," says musician and novelist
Loquillo
, who took advantage of the confinement to see "all the European cinema of the 70s, and especially Jean-Pierre Melville: someone once said that I was a Melville character, and I think that is quite correct."
"That's why I have been left with a very bitter feeling", continues Loquillo, "because I have realized that the work that I have been doing for 42 years does not give a shit. It has been shown that we
workers of culture give a zero to the administration.While
other sectors appear in the newspapers all day and are vindicated, culture does not exist, and I notice the great voices of the culture of this country defending their sector are lacking, that I do notice is lacking and it has disappointed me a lot and it hurts. They are silent, when they should have defended the guild, and the rest to look for their lives, and that you do not think about saying what you think because you are screwed. "
"Culture has been the fuel that has kept us alive in this time," says Loquillo.
More than half of the 15 interviewees use another word: "Lifeguard".
"What saved me first was writing," explains writer and journalist
Rosa Montero
.
"At first I was paralyzed and with an empty head. For the first time in my life I couldn't even read, and it was hard for me to write, the first months it was crying to write, I couldn't. But I had to review a novel and that made me land , and I went back to reading without stopping. I have always believed that the talisman that saves you from everything is reading. It is more than therapeutic. It is oxygen, it is sustenance, it is much more than therapy. "
Reading the classics is a form of medicine.
This year my bedside book has been Marco Aurelio's 'Meditations'.
I was reading fragments, I opened the book to any page
Irene Vallejo
"For me, ancient philosophers are therapeutic," says Irene Vallejo.
"Reading them is a form of medicine.
Meditating is a word that has the same roots as doctor and medicine
. And specifically, my bedside book has been Marco Aurelio's 'Meditations'. They transmitted peace to me. I was reading fragments, I opened the book for any page ".
One page leads to another page.
"My medicine was music, but not listening to it, but making it", says the musician
Pablo Alboran
, "to
spit out my anger, vent all the uncertainty
, doubts, fears, especially at the beginning. It was key for me to be able to have a place to put all that garbage that he had in his head and that has affected us all. I also saw all Netflix and HBO and Amazon, "he continues.
"And I have read a lot of poetry, Silvio M. Rodríguez Carrillo, Marwan or Ismael Serrano, also Harari, who I really like how he presents his reflections, and
The Tyranny of Merit
by Michael Sandel. But I watched the news with my parents and watched their faces of fear, aged 70 and 73, and I felt like a child and at the same time their father and protector. I saw their helplessness and vulnerability and automatically went to the studio to try to sort my head. "
The order, again.
"Confinement helped me to put order in my life," explains actress
María Adánez
.
"I liked stopping, living more in the present, day by day. It was a very good and productive time with my partner, and of course we used a lot of reading, movies, series and music. I read a lot of books, but the The one I liked the most was
Patria
, by Fernando Aramburu. I liked it so much, so much that I did not want to see the series.
It is a very painful book, but it is part of our history
. It is a book that you want to put down from the first minute, but not you can stop reading. "
For the filmmaker
José Luis Garci,
films and music have been the company this year 'exiled in a town in Malaga.
"I take it as a paid vacation, so I have no conscience whatsoever to see a movie at 11 in the morning. The vaccine is fine, but until they put it on me, the movies, Beethoven and football are from At the moment my vaccinations, and if the game is good then I see
El chiringuito
and I laugh a lot ".
That not everything was going to be culture, of course.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
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See links of interest
Holidays 2021
Rome - Genoa
UCAM Murcia - Real Madrid
West Bromwich Albion - Newcastle United
Huesca - Celta de Vigo
Atlético - Real Madrid, live