Sant Jordi Day - Worlds Book Day 23 April

World Book Day, also known as World Book and Copyright Day or International Day of the Book, is an annual event organized by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing and copyright. The first World Book Day was celebrated on 23 April in 1995, and continues to be recognized on that day.

23rd April: On the day of Sant Jordi in Barcelona - as in all of Catalonia - people give one another a rose or a book. Not only couples do this. The Generalitat in Plaça de Sant Jaume is open to the public. In the palace and around it there is a large rose market. You can buy books everywhere.

Sant Jordi: Day of the Book and the Rose

Documents show that the tradition of giving away roses as a symbol of love on the day of Sant Jordi, dates back to the 15th century, even though the exact date is not known. Furthermore, why this day is the day of lovers and Sant Jordi has become the patron saint of lovers is not known with certainty. In the most famous legend of Saint George he didn’t marry the princess - although he released her from the dragon - as the moral of this story was Christian baptism rather than love, according to the legend (see below).

In 1926 Spain declared the 23rd April, the anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, the most famous Spanish writer, as Book Day. This was coping England, who had also respected the 23rd April as the death of Shakespeare. It was a coincidence that this coincided with the day of the feast of Sant Jordi. This led, however, to mean that Book Day was hardly celebrated. Only much later did the day of love also became a day of literature in the mind of the population.

The 23rd April, the day of Sant Jordi, the patron saint of Catalonia, is today the day of the rose and the book, the day of love and culture.

The original idea was conceived in 1922 by Vicente Clavel, director of Cervantes publishing house in Barcelona, as a way to honour the author Miguel de Cervantes and boost the sales of books. It was first celebrated in Spain on 7 October 1926, Cervantes' birthday, before being moved to his death date, 23 April, in 1930. In Catalonia, the celebration coincided with Saint George’s Day (Diada de Sant Jordi) in honour to its patron saint and, as a result, the Book Day merged with the original festivity and continues with great popularity in Catalonia, where it is also referred to as The Day of Books and Roses.

In 1995, UNESCO decided that the World Book and Copyright Day would be celebrated on 23 April, as the date is also the anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, as well as that of the birth or death of several other prominent authors. (In a historical coincidence, Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same date—23 April 1616—but not on the same day, as at the time, Spain used the Gregorian calendar and England used the Julian calendar; Shakespeare actually died 11 days after Cervantes died, on 3 May of the Gregorian calendar, and Cervantes died on 22 April but was buried a day after, on 23 April.)