The long-awaited inauguration of the Casa Blai Bonet took place today with an emotional ceremony attended by poets and friends of the author.

The Consell de Mallorca has inaugurated the Casa Blai Bonet. Poetry centre in Santanyí, where the poet and writer lived most of his life.

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Casa Blai Bonet

The president of the Consell de Mallorca, Llorenç Galmés, has celebrated the opening of this space that “not only pays tribute to one of the most important poets of our land, but will also become a beacon of culture and creativity for all Mallorcans”. Galmés also highlighted the poet’s ability to “capture the essence of Mallorca and its people in his verses, which is an invaluable asset for our cultural identity”.

The Casa Blai Bonet is a project “devoted entirely to poetry as a meeting place”, according to Castells in his welcoming speech, who spoke of “preserving, disseminating and planting poetry for the future” purposes with which “what must be a centre of reference in contemporary Catalan poetry is born”.

The opening ceremony included special speeches by the poet and friend of Blai Bonet, Antoni Vidal Ferrando, who said a few words of remembrance for the author and read one of his poems, also dedicated to Bonet. The poet Antonina Canyelles, one of the authors present in the documentary and bibliographic collection of the Casa Blai Bonet, also participated by reading some of her poems. Sebastià Adrover continued with a speech in memory of his former friend Blai Bonet.

The actor Toni Gomila gave voice to Bonet’s poetry with two speeches, as did the singer Joana Gomila, who performed her version of the poem ‘Soletat oberta’.

After the opening ceremony, the doors of the Casa Blai Bonet were opened to the more than 300 people attending the event, who were able to visit the facilities of the new centre in a staggered manner. During the visit, in addition to the different spaces and museum elements, visitors were able to enjoy an installation in the form of a videomapatge created by Carme Gomila and projected onto the interior façade of Blai Bonet’s old house. A tribute to the memory of the author, who received the visitors in the first person. To conclude the event, a second videomapping was projected, this time on the interior façade of the Poeteca building, in order to vindicate the centre that has just been inaugurated as the House of Poetry, a space for meeting and dissemination of contemporary Catalan poetry. From the words of Blai Bonet and the poets present in the centre’s documentary collection, and the other authors of yesterday and today to project poetry into the future. The intervention ended with a powerful image of more than a hundred poets in Catalan of all times.