SAINT George's Day is not just an English celebration, but is alive and well in Catalunya, too – although instead of fire-breathing dragons, master carvers and toasts to the Queen, Spain's north-eastern region celebrates with books and flowers.
Today, known as Dia de Sant Jordi in Catalunya, marks the annual tradition whereby, according to legend, members of the public give their sweethearts a book or a flower.
And April 23 has become International Book Day (Dia Internacional del Llibre in Catalunya) because it is the day both Spain's and England's most famous literary icons, William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes – of Don Quijote fame – died, albeit in practice they passed away on different dates because the countries used different calendars at the time.
Sant Jordi in Barcelona alone – never mind the rest of the region – will bring 3,900 flower stalls and 923 book stalls out onto the street, and the popular tourist boulevard, Las Ramblas, will overflow with floral and literary stands.
Florists expect to sell around six million roses today (Sunday), as they did on April 23 last year.
Online store Amazon, which started out life as one of the first internet-based bookshops and has now become practically a department store and hypermarket, set up a 'Celebrity Boulevard' yesterday (Saturday) with popular Catalunya authors Vicenç Villatora and Lluís Bassat (El regreso de los Bassat, or The return of the Bassats); Sergio Vila-Sanjuán (El informe Casabona, or The Casabona report); Jordi Sierra i Fabra (Filo de Sable, or The sabre's edge); Fernando Gamboa (Tinieblas, or Darkness); Mercedes Pinto (Cartas a una extraña, or Letters to a stranger – a female stranger, that is), and Gonzalo Giner (Las ventanas del cielo, or The windows of heaven).
Amazon has also challenged bookworms to tattoo themselves (temporarily) with quotes from their favourite authors, and a team of tattoo artists will do the honours using a stencil in the Palau Robert.
Hundreds of authors sign their works, including Irish, American and Italian household names
Meanwhile, today, literally hundreds of international authors will be signing their works in book stores throughout the city.
They include the prolific Irish author of thought-provoking chick-lit, Marian Keyes (pictured right, from Twitter) – if you loved Last Chance Saloon, Watermelon, Sushi for Beginners and Rachel's Holiday, head for Casa del Llibre on the Passeig de Gràcia between 18.00 and 19.00 or the FNAC in El Triangle (Plaça de Catalunya) between noon and 13.00.
Other top international authors include the Minnesota-born Norwegian Siri Hustvedt (Casa del Llibre on the Rambla de Catalunya from noon to 13.00 and the Passeig de Gràcia from 16.00 to 17.00; FNAC-El Triangle from 19.00 to 20.00; the marquée on the Rambla from 13.00 to 14.00 and that of Librería Laie on the Passeig de Gràcia from 11.00 to noon) whose fiction includes What I loved, The sorrows of an American, The summer without men and The blazing world; and Italy's Federico Moccia (Casa del Llibre on the Rambla from 17.00 to 18.00 and on the Passeig de Gràcia from 18.00 to 19.00), author of Three metres above heaven, Excuse me if I call you my love, and Excuse me if I want to marry you, the first of which was turned into a film starring young Spanish actor Mario Casas.
Spanish authors who have become household names include Lucía Extebarría, famous for her deeply-introspective social commentary disguised as chick-lit; Fernando Aramburu, whose Patria ('Nation') – about a woman returning to her Basque home town decades after her husband was killed by ETA terrorists – hit the top-10 bestseller list at the end of 2016; Ildefonso Falcones, who churns out historic doorstoppers; literary legend Rosa Montero; Eduardo Mendoza, whose blackly-funny socio-political tales recently won him the Cervantes Award; Dolores Redondo, also a top-10 bestseller last year with her crime novel Todo esto te daré ('All this I'll give you'), and writers who, sometimes with pseudonyms and sometimes with their real names, have finally brought 'girlie' beach-reading fiction to Spain's bookshops, including Elísabet Benavent, 'Blue Jeans', and 'Megan Maxwell', the latter being Spanish born-and-bred despite her English-language pen name.
Authors of non-fiction, including self-help manuals and autobiographies, include High Court judge Fernando Grande-Marlaska and TV presenter Samanta Villar.
Conspicuous by their absence are the highly-global Spanish authors Matilde Asensi, whose epic The last Cato has been compared with
