The Association of Writers in the Catalan Language (AELC) requested that the Barcelona City Council “withdraw” the international writing residency grant for Latin American authors announced at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (Mexico) by the city’s mayor, Jaume Collboni.
Collboni said yesterday Sunday that with the new ‘Narrar Barcelona’ grant, endowed with 80,000 euros, the City Council seeks to “strengthen the historical, cultural and linguistic link between the city and Latin American and Caribbean authors”.
However, EFTA showed its “concern” about this initiative, understanding that if it “excludes” Catalan authors, it “aggravates” the “current situation of professional precariousness” of writers in that language, as indicated in a statement this Monday.
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Furthermore, the entity emphasizes that any call that “disparages” the indigenous languages of South America and Mesoamerica and, “obviously”, Catalan “will only insist on the processes of minoritization suffered by these languages”.
Therefore, and because it is “a unilateral measure”, EFTA calls for the withdrawal of the call and that its allocation be dedicated “entirely” to the “creation in Catalan, a language that has no more institutions than the Catalan ones to guarantee its promotion, dissemination and continuity”.
According to what Collboni announced yesterday, the new project, driven with the collaboration of Casa Amèrica Catalunya, will allow “an author with an already consolidated career in the American continent to live for three months in Barcelona to produce a new work inspired by their experience in the city”.
‘Narrar Barcelona’ will be convened annually and the first call will be made public from next January, explained the mayor of Barcelona, guest of honor at the FIL of Guadalajara, which takes place between November 29 and December 7 and is the largest meeting of the publishing world in Spanish.
