Joan Manuel Serrat, Joan-Pere Viladecans, Dolors Udina, Alba Sarraute and the Eufonic, National Culture Awards 2023

The singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat; the painter Joan-Pere Viladecans; the translator Dolors Udina Abelló; the clown and director of circus shows Alba Sarraute Pons, and the Eufonic festival have been honored this Friday with the National Culture Awards 2023. The National Council for Culture and the Arts (CoNCA) has handed out the awards in an event to the rehabilitated Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC), National Culture Award 2019. The awards are the country's most important cultural distinction and are awarded annually to people, entities or institutions that have contributed to creativity.

The act of proclamation and delivery of the National Awards of Catalonia was led by cultural journalist Neus Molina and had the musical accompaniment of pianist Ignasi Terraza.

The CoNCA plenary and awards jury is made up of Vinyet Panyella, Margarida Troguet, Jordi Font, Tania Safura Adam, Jauma Ayats, Salvador Casals and Núria Iceta.

Joan Manuel Serrat

The CoNCA plenary awarded Joan Manuel Serrat (Barcelona, 1943) for having become one of the most prominent figures in modern Catalan and Spanish song with his music, which draws from various genres such as French song, Catalan folklore , the Andalusian copla, the Argentine tango and the bolero.

The National Culture Award recognizes that Serrat has been able to reach the most diverse audiences, since his initial connection with the New Song movement, with his own lyrics and those of recognized poets, which have turned him into a singer of great popular projection , national and international. They have also appreciated that in 2022 he retired from the stage after more than fifty years of his debut.

Serrat assured that "he is very grateful for the award because it is given to him at home". "At home it leaves a sweeter, pleasant aftertaste and is much more satisfying", he pointed out. "All's well that ends well", he commented on receiving an award from the Generalitat.

After saying goodbye to the stage at the end of 2022, Serrat has avoided talking about "an end to his career". "The award comes to me for the fullest maturity of the career. Despite the fact that he has decided to get off the stage, this does not mean that he stops being an artist and writing songs", he insisted. In this sense, the singer-songwriter is convinced that new projects and proposals will arrive but he does not know "where these things he is anxiously waiting for will go".

Joan-Pere Viladecans

The painter Joan-Pere Viladecans (Barcelona, 1948) has received the prize for his career as a painter and engraver, since 1969, in the field of visual arts. "Starting from post-war Catalan informalism and the avant-garde, Viladecans achieves a language of his own for his works, which he has exhibited in art galleries around the world", pointed out the CoNCA.

"His language is inspired by nature and beings, explores various techniques in favor of the purification of symbols and forms and conveys the human dimension of beings with all the intensity of the existential gaze", added the promoters of the National Awards of Culture 2023.

The painter Joan-Pere Viladecans has assured that he is "happy" for the prize and that the more they give him, the "better". "They pay attention to me", he said. Viladecans has explained that his is a "difficult, long, and sometimes very adult profession, and it pays off when you see that you have been of some use".

The painter took the opportunity to point out that culture is the "inevitable" heritage of a country to "defend itself and coexist with other cultures", and regretted that music, painting, cinema, and literature have always been "the poor party girl".

Dolors Udina Abelló

Regarding the translator Dolors Udina Abelló (Barcelona, 1943), "excellence" has been valued in her work as a literary translator, especially from English to Catalan, although she has also translated from French and Spanish. The award also recognized his long career in teaching and his contribution to the training of a generation of translators. "The neatness of his craft has led him to incorporate more than two hundred authors' titles into Catalan, such as Cynthia Ozick, Alice Munro, JM Coetzee, Toni Morrison, Raymond Carver, Nadine Gordimer, JRR Tolkien, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Ali Smith, as well as receiving numerous recognitions", have applauded from the CoNCA.

Udina has said that the National Culture Award is a "very considerable honor" that recognizes the work done by a profession that often "works in the shadows". Likewise, he applauded that the work of translators is increasingly valued and he attributed this to the role of independent publishers.

Regarding his career, he said that he started "translating everything" and that little by little he specialized. However, he has applauded that one of the last names he has translated has been the Englishwoman Virginia Woolf.

"I have the feeling that I have been working all my life to get to translate Woolf. She is a very difficult author, but as you work on her, she lights up your life", he emphasized. Udina has also acknowledged that he is concerned about the situation of the Catalan language and that it often seems "contradictory" to the effort that translators make with the use of the language and the return they get from it.

Alba Sarraute Pons

The clown, saxophonist and director of circus shows Alba Sarraute Pons (Argentona, 1982) has been awarded for her "solid" training in various stage disciplines, which has translated into an "indisputable and very creative artistic solvency". They have also applauded that Sarraute incorporates visual narrative as a guiding thread and circus techniques as tools of expression. "For his career in several European companies and projects, which has given him international recognition as a great value of circus dramaturgy", they expressed. The National Culture Award 2023 has also valued that Sarraute has provided a reflection through his creations on the body of women, motherhood and the circus arts.

In his statements, Sarraute assured that receiving the National Culture Award is a "pleasant surprise" and an "honor" that will help him project himself. The clown and saxophonist has extended recognition to the whole group effort of her circus team to take a big project everywhere without knowing if it will work. He also pointed out that the award helps to trust different formats.

For Sarraute, returning home gives "facilities" and generates "complicity". Since becoming a mother, an issue she explores in her work, it has been more enriching for the director of circus shows to bet on quality instead of quantity.

Euphonic Festival

Finally, the Festival of the sound, visual and digital-performative arts of the Terres de l'Ebre Eufonic, has received the National Culture Award "for the successful combination of innovation and tradition, based on the artistic proposals of advanced trends that program in the festival, which are linked to the geographical environment and the heritage wealth of the Terres de l'Ebre as a stage and place of gestation".

The awards jury has ensured that the contest invites the discovery of artistic proposals in the various fields of audiovisual, in unique spaces in different municipalities and organizes conferences for professionals and training workshops.

The director of the Eufonic festival, Vicent Fibla, has stated that this is a "huge" recognition not only of the initiative but also of the supralocal proposal of the territory. Fibla, who has been working on the project for 12 years, has assured that the award is an "incentive", an "impulse" and an "encouragement" to push Eufonic forward for another 12 years.

In the same vein, Fibla has explained that the artistic proposal of the festival combines music, visual arts, sound arts, performance and installations, so this recognition is "an aid to make these practices visible", assured the director.

Fibla said that the festival was born in the Terres de l'Ebre and this is the place where he wants it to stay: "It is this character that propels it from the outside", he reiterated. "We hope that the future will give rise to more proposals", added the award winner, who explained that the festival does not necessarily have to be bigger, but the proposal must be improved.

Fibla has highlighted the importance of giving a national award outside of Barcelona and has assured that nowadays "there is practically more diversity in the rural and rustic sectors than in the big cities".