When a person receives a prize, there are two types of article to write: those we rarely get to do about people we love, and the normal ones, in which you limit yourself to discussing the recipient's merits. As far as I can remember, it's been rare I've had the bar set as high for either type as when it comes to Quim Monzó. Although it was difficult to imagine, despite it being years he's been at the top, Monzó, a multifaceted figure who breaks with any convention, has become a classic. A young classic (relatively young, Quim!) on a list of those recognised by Òmnium on which he is preceded by Espriu, Rodoreda, Martí i Pol, Calders and so many other figures from the apex of Catalan letters.
It's a prize for perseverance and consistency. For meticulousness and artisanal writing. Nobody dedicates as many hours to their work and enjoys it as little as him. For years, almost twenty years, I watched him suffer over his column, which had to be perfect every day and, in the end, would end up perfect. Nobody else has ever achieved it for so long. Writers see themselves reflected in his prize, we journalists see ourselves, scriptwriters, artists, radio and television presenters, imitators see themselves. Many people see themselves in the prize because we all, at one time or another, have wanted to have a bit of Monzó.
Also for that Monzó committed to work done well (he's an insufferable perfectionist) and to the country. It won't be down to chance that it's the year that the president of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart, is in prison for an unjust decision, first by the National Audience court, then by the Supreme court, that he is the winner. Monzó, with his sometimes irreverent, but always calibrated and precise language, embodies the generalised current protest, even though he's not a person given to great political pronouncements and, above all, above all, the commitment. One imagines the organisation's vice-president, Marcel Mauri, heading to his meeting with the writer with an envelope in which Jordi Cuixart tells him, in a note written from Soto del Real prison, that he has been honoured with the award. And Monzó, baffled and overwhelmed, thinking about the difficulties he will be caused by such a great burden. Caving in under calls, interviews, photographs and mobile messages. Wanting to get off the pedestal everyone is pushing him onto since the prize has been announced.
But nobody can fill the current hole like him. The king of irony could explain to us like nobody else what's happening in the country, to its political class and, above all, to its Catalan language. The person who provocatively warned that Catalan is heading towards becoming a dialect of Spanish the year in which the state has done away with Catalan autonomy, applied article 155 of the Constitution, wants to change the education model, end channel TV3 and the other public media and turn Catalan children Spanish. We'll have to pay attention, close attention, to his speech on 4th June at Barcelona's Palau de la Música Catalana. It will be a piece up to the standards of a genius. Like Monzó.