Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Barcelona, a publishing lab since time immemorial, is accustomed to risk because it has always had to defend itself with its own means. More companies and new projects are needed. The more diverse a habitat, the longer it endures.

Albert Armengol
The Planeta group, based in the former Banca Catalana building,

Barcelona was already an international publishing cluster 20 years ago in 1995, rubbing elbows with New York, London, Frankfurt and Milan as the headquarters of the largest publishing houses in the entire industry (agents, scouts, editors, printers). In addition to the strategic role it traditionally played between Europe and Latin America – Joan Grijalbo, Josep Janés and Martí Soler representing Barcelona editors who served as intercontinental bridges – and its majority control over the Spanish-language book business, came an age-old yet innovative business vision across the board. The city competed with Madrid to reach the top spot in turnover and the number of books published per annum, but the international industry’s biggest publishing houses knew that the initiative stemmed from Barcelona and that, schoolbooks and official texts aside, the publishing capital was here.

Three years after the most profitable Olympics in history, Barcelona competed to consolidate its multimedia publishing industry, its stake in the Latin American markets and the dynamisation of its cultural sphere and its authors, bending over backwards to achieve a cross-cutting international dissemination that included the city’s status as a hub for design and contemporary art. This reputation for age-old cosmopolitanism, earned in the early 20th century, was strengthened in the late Franco period with the gauche divine left-wing intellectual movement and exploded in 1992 when the entire world discovered that this Mediterranean city, which had gone through its industrial revolution before inventing healthy diets and exquisite cuisine, was essentially a city of gamble and risk.

As an international publishing capital, Barcelona has been witness to essential changes in the book business over the last two decades.The city thus embarked on a process of publishing concentration on the basis of joint ventures, acquisitions and takeovers of small and family-run publishers as well as those in difficult situations due to a shift in direction or an attachment to obsolete business models, a process that created large corporations like the ever-expanding Grupo Planeta and Random House Mondadori, which recently became Penguin Random House after taking over key publishers in Madrid.

Albert Armengol
The RBA group building on the new Diagonal.

The result has been twofold: on the one hand the progressive disappearance of the publishing industry’s “middle class” – even if new and extremely powerful companies like Acantilado and Salamandra have appeared on the scene – and on the other hand, the dispersion produced by the proliferation of small publishing houses with their own personalities, called “independent” houses, not without reluctance from some industry players; they are independent compared to the big publishing groups but not with respect to other business imperatives. Companies like Minúscula, Alpha Decay, Ara Llibres, Libros del Asteroide, Melusina, Plataforma Editorial, Alrevés, Rayo Verde, Libros del Zorro Rojo, Blackie Books, L’Altra Editorial and more were born – publishers that enrich the habitat, rekindle old uses and customs in the book world, attempt to recuperate the industry’s essence as editorial practice and use social networks to promote their catalogue, but especially to induce readers to speak about their preferences.

Faced with the famous phrase “No unsolicited manuscripts” (and editorial tyranny regarding the uninformed and often helpless author!) the first literary agencies were created in the sixties, including the pioneering Carmen Balcells, tied forever to Barcelona’s boom and status as a literary capital. Yet Barcelona continues to be the forge in which this profession is shaped. The most important agencies with the most influential client portfolios in the Spanish world are still mostly found in Barcelona. They grow, they multiply, they also disperse, and they transform. The more or less traditional houses, some large, some small (Carmen Balcells, MB, Casanovas & Lynch and Kerrigan, among others), have been joined over the years by other companies, perhaps equally traditional but smaller and more fast-paced (Sandra Bruna, Pontas, Silvia Bastos, The Foreign Office of Teresa Vilarrubla, The Ella Sher Literary Agency, SalmaiaLit, Paginatres, Letras Propias, among many others), which incorporate new trends into the industry and which, naturally, further break down the allegiance between publishers and their authors.

Moreover, the emergence of the digital world and the society of creativity, in which the number of authors (perhaps a more apt name would be “content creators”) grows exponentially, the result of the unrestricted freedom to take an artistic selfie at a moment’s whim and post it independently through new digital self-publishing platforms (Lulu.com was a pioneer), is effectively leading to another proliferation, that of nanojobs like coaching, consulting, providing comprehensive assistance to authors (correction, editing, book doctoring, etc.) like Covadonga D’lom Asesoría Editorial and Refinería Literaria, as well as companies who provide publishing services and work to solve the challenges that large houses, like Deleatur for example, tend to outsource.

The logos of different literary agencies from Barcelona. The most important agencies with the most significant lists of clients in the world of Spanishlanguage literature continue to be based principally in Barcelona.

We must press forward, and press forward we will. Barcelona will be UNESCO’s literature capital, its status as an international publishing capital will be recognised by city officials as well, perhaps a Taschen store will open on Passeig de Gràcia and it is likely that Amazon will join the party by opening one of its logistical mega-centres in one of Europe’s most active cities. The technological district 22@ will include an incubator for publishing companies like Mmcardona and other digital consulting companies. It’s also extremely likely that many of the publishers and printers in Asia that print and publish European books will start training in Barcelona in a few years, a city home to one of the leading international master’s degrees in publishing, as well as a postgraduate publishing programme of real substance! It’s even possible that Barcelona may soon become one of the busiest cities in the world in the creation of content-related apps!

It is essential that local and regional, not to mention state, authorities understand that Barcelona is where many of the international Spanish-language best-sellers got their start, from Javier Marías and Javier Sierra to María Dueñas and Ruiz-Zafón, and that the city’s bilingual nature should be preserved, as should the fixed price that enables Europe to be an international power in the transfer of content and books for leisure. The more diverse a habitat, the longer it endures. We need new businesses, wild ideas that can be implemented, risky content, bravery; as Faulkner said, nothing ventured, nothing gained, a sentiment later echoed by several Nobel Prize-winning economists. And Barcelona, publishing lab from the days of Cervantes, from time immemorial, is accustomed to risk because it has always had to defend itself. But this city is overflowing with local and international talent. There’s no need to worry. We shall overcome.