The magazine 'L'Avenç', Gold Medal for Cultural Merit
It recognises its work for culture and research during its 500 issues and 46 years of life.
On 27 March, Barcelona City Council will award the Gold Medal for Cultural Merit to the magazine L'Avenç. The aim is to recognise its irreplaceable work for culture and research in Barcelona and Catalonia, which has been carried out over half a thousand issues and almost fifty years of life. The publication will reach its 500th issue in April, and, as recently announced its director, Josep M. Muñoz, will be the last issue of the monthly magazine, although they are studying ways of continuing the series.
Since its appearance in 1977, under the impetus of a group of young anti-Franco historians (Leandre Colomer, Ferran Mascarell, Carmen Isasa and Fèlix Manito), supported by Josep Fontana, L'Avenç has played a key role in the development of Barcelona's academic and cultural fabric, publishing the books of several generations of historians and writers who have become, in turn, the most prominent voices in their respective fields. Throughout its history, its focus has evolved -always maintaining the maxim of high dissemination- from a basically historiographical journal to a journal of culture. This transition, driven by those who have been in charge of it for the last twenty-five years, Núria Iceta and Josep M. Muñoz, has ensured that it has maintained its character as a reference journal in Catalonia, without exhausting its thematic range and expanding and renewing its readership. It was born to respond to an urgent and specific need -the history of a country repressed by Franco's regime- but it has become a reference for several generations over the years.
It participated in the founding of the Associació de Publicacions Periòdiques En Català (APPEC), as well as in the creation of the collective of independent publishers "Llegir en Català". In addition to its role as a magazine, L'Avenç has been -in a consolidated way since 2006- a publishing house dedicated to the publication of history books, but also books of literature and essays that help to understand the history of the country and the time in which they were written. This is how the magazine and publishing house have built up a catalogue of collaborators and writers of the highest level, opening the doors to publication to many university students, and allowing the development of singular projects by guest writers who publish a series over the course of an entire calendar year that ends up becoming a book. Likewise, the recovery of texts from the 19th and 20th centuries and the many translations published by L'Avenç have helped to enrich the catalogue in Catalan in a more than notable way.
The magazine was recognised in 2014 with the Ciutat de Barcelona Award for Media.