After Sant Jordi, it seems appropriate to take stock. The book world seems to be heading, in recent years, towards a celebration of cultural commerce in which a good part of the annual turnover is concentrated on a single day. It is still good news that the festival of the rose and the book continues to be so well received, and that there are so many people who still have the desire to give a book and a rose to their loved one. A few years ago, things were such that men bought the rose and women the book, but the macho undertone of this exchange has tended to dissipate (nobody wants to remember that detail). It is evident that if everyone buys a book for Sant Jordi (which also doesn't happen, let's not fool ourselves) the business can do very well, because selling two million books in one day is no small feat (but there are more than two million Catalan speakers; little desire to spend, and even less to read). But, if we look at the number of books the best-selling author can place on that day alone, we see that it will hardly reach 30,000 copies (their title does not represent even 1% of total sales); in other words: the most important thing is of no importance. All those books we call ‘best sellers’, books that adapt to popular tastes, only represent 6% of the total books sold that day. Nor should it be added that only a little more than half of the books sold are in Catalan, with percentages that tend to equalize, unfortunately, year after year. And if it's about selling popular books, we can't expect that, once certain books have become 'mass culture', these works will be the ones that stand out most for their aesthetic or literary values –or for their intellectual merit. There are still people who are surprised when they see how bad bad literature can be, and it is even admirable that high culture dedicates more effort to sinking what the market has elevated than to lifting what, being excellent, goes more or less unnoticed and doesn't bring in any money. It goes without saying that this phenomenon shows more resentment and snobbery than genuine concern for the state of culture. That Sant Jordi is a celebration of commercial or popular literature should not scare anyone, because the next day (Sant Fidel) we can continue going to bookstores and take home, without queues or crowds, the true wonders that are still being published by editors who have not turned into pimps for ideological propaganda disguised as 'for everyone' narrativity. What we know as literature, or good literature, will never die, but it will have an increasingly reduced role and place in culture, a phenomenon that each passing day moves further away from what it should be ( an exhibition and learning of possible excellence) to become a simulation of cultural or ideological integration: in the celebration of the cliché, or of that which is most sweat-soaked and predictably innocuous, of what we already know reinforced with propaganda and trinkets. 

"What a shame to be poor", one reader of romantasy tells another as she considers a hardcover edition with a colored spine of Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yarros's bestselling saga. After a brief debate with her friend and several knowing glances, the book ended up in the bookseller's hands and the credit card did the rest. Transaction completed, happy reader. The scene took place in the space that one of the main bookstores has set up for Sant Jordi in Plaça d'Espanya in Palma. Like this one, hundreds, perhaps thousands, have been repeated this Book Day.

The rose that the artist Pep Llambias (Alaró, 1954) has made for ARA Balears and that will be at all the Sant Jordi stalls in Palma is not, by any means, the first one he has made. The thorn of a rose, in fact, was one of the main protagonists of the exhibition with which he filled the Llotja de Palma 20 years ago. “I am very attracted to the duality it symbolizes”, he acknowledges, and states that he has some planted in the yard of his house.

That Saint George has taken flight in recent years is a fact that is noted every April 23 in Palma. If last year two caparrots were premiered there, confirming its character as a traditional festival, this year the festival has begun almost a week earlier with a prior fair in the neighborhoods of the City. Nevertheless, the momentum of Book Day has also been felt outside Palma: throughout the Balearic Islands, numerous bookstores are preparing since February for one of the most important days of the year.

The Balearic Cultural Work (OCB) will put an end to the Sant Jordi Day in Palma with a concert by the group Nou Romancer. The performance will take place on April 23rd at 8 p.m. in L'Olivar square and will serve as the closing of a day marked by books and street culture.

Vilafranca de Bonany will kick off the Book Week in the municipality with the celebration of the II Poetic Marathon, which will take place on Friday, April 17, and Saturday, April 18, at Restaurant d’Eliss (Ctra. Palma, 29).

Palma celebrates this Sant Jordi with more spaces, more activities, and the inclusion of flower shops. Under the slogan ‘Sant Jordi, books and roses everywhere’, the celebration takes a step further this year in its expansion and aims to reach more points in the city.

The promenade of Palmanova's Mar will host on April 18 and 19 a cultural weekend that consolidates a significant change in Calvià's festive model. The municipality will celebrate Book Day and, the following day, Saint George, patron saint of England, in an institutional effort to strengthen the link with British tourism.

The Mallorcan Carles Rebassa, winner of the Sant Jordi award for the novel Prometheus of a Thousand Ways, has criticized on social media the lack of institutional recognition after obtaining this award, one of the most prestigious in Catalan literature, convened annually by Òmnium Cultural, an entity dedicated to the defense of the Catalan language and culture.

After months of intense controversy, which prompted citizens, institutions, and pacifist groups to demand explanations and alternatives, the Ministry of Defense has finally backed down and withdrawn plans to build a large ammunition depot at the Son Sant Joan air base (Palma), a project that had alarmed residents of Sant Jordi. According to sources close to the Air Force and the Ministry, the original idea of ​​equipping this facility with an ammunition storage capacity of 75,000 kg of material such as bombs and missiles has been suspended, and other locations outside the base are now being considered. The project—which had already been awarded and included in a plan to modernize Spanish military logistics—had drawn considerable opposition, especially from residents of Casa Blanca and Sant Jordi, due to its proximity to urban areas and Palma's civilian airport, Spain's third busiest airport for passenger traffic.

The Civil Guard has arrested the man who caused the accident in Son Oms, where eight people were injured, two of them seriously. According to the armed force, the driver is a foreign national who is accused of reckless driving.