Author Archives: Carles Domènec

About Carles Domènec

Photographer and journalist

The Kosmopolis festival and amplified literature

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The Kosmopolis festival, which focuses on literary creation in all of its forms, has been a part of Barcelona’s rich panorama of specialised industry events – BCNegra, Món Llibre, Setmana de la Poesia and Barcelona Novel·la Històrica – since 2002.

The inaugural discussion of Kosmopolis on March 18th of last year, with Juan Marsé, Josep M. Cuenca and Jorge Herralde.

“Amplified literature” is the theme of Kosmopolis, a declaration of intent for showcasing literature in the most varied and ample sense. Festival director Juan Insua explains that “the goal is to think of literature as a big house with many doors; the ‘amplified’ concept relates to the fact that you can enter from a television series, a video game, a graphic novel or scientific developments”.

A total of 8,900 people took part in the most recent Kosmopolis, held at the Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Culture (CCCB). The biennial event goes beyond the five days of the festival to offer an ongoing programme that keeps the Kosmopolis spirit alive throughout the year. “In 2002 Josep Ramoneda, the director of the CCCB at the time, put me in charge of creating a literary festival and I thought it would be best to create a 21st-century event with an open concept focused on reigniting an interest in literature”, says Insua.

Rather than limit itself to the written word, the festival places equal importance on spoken and digital formats. “The ultimate goal is to keep the flame of literature alive as one of the most powerful and transformative arts, understood as a constantly changing force, and to see that literature is a great tool for the evolution of a society – that it is a land without limits”, says Insua, who explains that “a world without literature would be inconceivable, but it is simplistic to think that we can only understand literature from the perspective of the Gutenberg Parenthesis”. He continues to say that “we are experiencing a conceptual transformation and what we now consider literature may have little to do with what we’ll think in fifteen years”.

Within these parameters, the ninth edition of Kosmopolis was held from 18 to 22 March 2015 and included writers’ roundtables to discuss literature, debates about translation, writing workshops, an exhibition showcasing W.G. Sebald, a book camp to discuss the future of books, activities for children and teens, recitals, the Canal Alfa with literature-related videos, and keynote presentations by relevant authors including Juan Marsé, Alberto Manguel, Javier Cercas and David Grossman.

“The crisis has affected us but we’ve managed to keep it at bay; the festival was shortened to three days starting in 2008 but we’ve brought back the five-day model and expanded sections”, says Insua. “We have seen that the publishing world is polarised with mergers of large houses, but small publishers and new libraries have emerged at the same time and traditional processes are being recovered; both models coexist.”

A Kosmopolis Bookcamp session at CCCB that explores the limits and possibilities of the book format,

Within this context, and with the city of Barcelona and the CCCB as a backdrop, Kosmopolis encourages community and a cultural ecosystem linked to literature. “It is a festival that was born in Barcelona because it is a capital of the arts, with a network of exemplary libraries, a powerful publishing industry in two languages, as well as many bookstores and literary festivals”, says Insua. Winner of the 2003 Ciutat de Barcelona award for the Cosmopolis. Borges and Buenos Aires exhibition, the festival coordinator concluded that “few cities have as many ingredients that make them literary cities; this justifies Barcelona’s bid to be designated a City of Literature by UNESCO, a bid in which Kosmopolis plays a fundamental role”.

BCNegra

The BCNegra Festival confirms Barcelona’s status as one of the international capitals of crime literature. The number of top local authors grows at a rapid rate, the most internationally renowned Nordic authors present their innovations, and there are specialised bookstores and libraries such as La Bòbila. BCNegra, which recently celebrated its ten-year anniversary, represents the central focus among all this crime literature-related activity.

The festival hosts the best authors, celebrates the prestigious Pepe Carvalho and Crims de Tinta (Ink Crimes) awards, showcasing crime literature across the city with fifty free activities held in a number of Barcelona neighbourhoods. The most recent edition, held from 29 January to 7 February and organised by bookseller Paco Camarasa, featured seventy writers, including Philip Kerr, Anne Perry, Alicia Giménez Bartlett and Lorenzo Silva.

Logos and posters from some of Barcelona’s literary festivals.

Món Llibre

This is Barcelona’s literature festival for children, their very own Sant Jordi, celebrated in the CCCB and MACBA venues. The event offers hundreds of activities with the aim of getting children interested in reading.

The eleventh edition of Món Llibre was celebrated on 18 and 19 April. The commemoration of one hundred fifty years of the Lewis Carroll classic Alice in Wonderland was the focus of activities. With the participation of more than forty publishers of children’s literature, the festival included theatre performances, film screenings, exhibitions, concerts and art installations.

Half a dozen book stalls were set up in Barcelona’s Plaça dels Àngels with a section dedicated to children’s literature. Many world languages, including sign language, were represented at the festival, along with a space dedicated to books in braille.

La Setmana de la Poesia

In 2011 the Barcelona City Council took charge of La Setmana de la Poesia, the city’s Poetry Week, one of the oldest festivals in Europe that has brought together three events in one poetry-based festival since 1985: the International Festival, the Day of Poetry and the Floral Games. Celebrated in May, the festival is a reflection of the massive number of poetry events promoted by the city throughout the year.

La Setmana de la Poesia resonates throughout the city with readings, meetings, conferences and concerts. Last year’s events were held in community centres, cultural centres, libraries, museums, cinemas and theatres, the MACBA, La Pedrera, Poble Espanyol, in the former Damm factory and the City Hall’s Saló de Cent (Great Hall).

Event organisers Teresa Colom and Sam Abrams comment that the festival “is a major public celebration that seeks to highlight the undeniable importance of poetry in people’s lives, in the life of the city and in the country’s literary system”.

Logos and posters from some of Barcelona’s literary festivals.

Barcelona Novel·la Històrica

El Born Cultural Centre, one of the city’s most significant historical venues, hosts Barcelona Novel·la Històrica in November, a festival celebrating the historical novel which has become a meeting point for authors and readers of this genre. The six-day festival coincides with the Bàrcino Historical Novel International Award, which this year honoured author Santiago Posteguillo for his life’s work. The festival focused on such prominent events as the centenary of World War I and the 40-year anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution, as well as the commemoration of Barcelona’s historic ties to the Romans. The event was a space for reflection on the historical genre, which also involved unprecedented aspects like the analysis of the “female” historical novel.

The modernist city of toys

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  • La ciutat de les joguines [City of Toys]. Barcelona, 1840–1918
  • 2013 Agustí Duran i Sanpere Barcelona History Prize
  • By: Pere Capellà Simó
  • Editorial Gregal and Barcelona City Council
  • Maçanet de la Selva, 2014
  • 436 pages

Toys are historical objects. The teacher, researcher and painter Pere Capellà Simó (Palma, 1981) confirms that in his book La ciutat de les joguines [City of Toys], which merited the 2013 Agustí Duran i Sanpere Barcelona History Prize, awarded in February as one of the City of Barcelona awards.

Toy development at the turn of the 20th century suggests a review of that period’s history, which saw a twinning of art and industry that symbolised the economic and cultural expansion of the rising bourgeoisie. The end of the Franco-Prussian War led to a golden age of toys. A huge toy industry was born. Germany was the main European producer and Paris was the centre of innovation. The first adverts by craft toy makers in Barcelona were distrib­uted in 1840. Catalonia’s capital wel­comed branches of French and German companies. The city established itself as a European metropolis and became the home of 60 toy factories and a hundred specialist toy shops. But the Great War would force the warring nations to halt toy production, leaving Barcelona, followed by Valencia and Madrid, to drive the sector forward. The first collections of Apel·les Mestres, the sketch artist Lola Anglada, Maria Junyent and the painters Manuel Rocamora and Lluís Tolosa were esta­blished. They were followed by another generation. The sculptor Frederic Marès built the Sentimental Museum of the 19th century and the painter Alfred Opisso i Cardona gathered together the toys of his childhood.

The book explores the world of toys during the years of Modernisme, Catalan Art Nouveau, and an industry that was within the reach of a large part of the population. In the 19th century childhood was long and, according to Charles Baudelaire, toys would become a child’s first contact with art. Intellectuals called for collaboration between prestigious artists and toy manufacturers, so that aesthetic criteria and refined taste would be developed before adulthood.

Readers will notice the importance the author attaches to the symbolic value of shop windows. Like the hole through which Alice enters wonderland, for a child, toy counters represent the happiness they wish for. Many families without means copy the toys they see there using materials closer to hand and, fascinated, we adults project our own experiences onto them.

La ciutat de les joguines arose out of a doctoral thesis that Capellà Simó presented in 2012. His research has two further threads, namely, Barcelona-Palma and the Paris model, which will inspire future publications. This work is not a novel but the direct, precise, straightforward style means you dive into it as if it were an entertaining narrative, with stories like that of Salomon Heischmann, director of the Société Française de Fabrication de Bébes et Jouets, who took refuge in Barcelona in August 1914.

Capellà Simó is the curator of the future permanent doll exhibition at the Museu Romàntic in Sitges and he warns us that shop windows have been replaced by museum display cases. All things considered, the development of toys is our own history written in small print, that of personal, everyday happenings, which is just as important as that of the great events.