Barcelona Metropolis

Editor in Catalan of Nobel prizewinner Svetlana Alexievich and the African writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Laura Huerga has built a catalogue that pays special attention to cultural and linguistic diversity and the commitment to freedoms and human rights. In this regard, and certain that projects such as Raig Verd have helped to increase the number of Catalan-language readers and to offer new perspectives, the publisher believes that only the connection with readers and booksellers can make the publishing sector, tested by the Covid-19 crisis, survive.

Gulliver’s Travels marked the beginning of my adult reading, because it’s the first novel that made me think that there was more to books than just a way to amuse myself. From there I turned to Borges and Dostoevsky.

I come from a family of very humble means. My mother raised my sister and I with the help of my grandmother, who worked as a housekeeper. Reading was encouraged at school, but it was our mother who urged us to read. She would take us to the library and to buy books. Despite how little we had, a book was a basic necessity.

From the age of 14 I worked to earn money, but every job allowed me to apply things I learned. At Decathlon I put my knowledge of French into practice, at the optician’s I learned how to make websites and this allowed me to enter the stock market world... But the goal was always to eke out a living.

Languages helped me enormously to emancipate myself. Having studied and now being able to read in six languages has given me a great means of independence.

The catalyst behind this decision was 15M and the economic crisis we have been enduring since 2007, but which in my case materialised in 2011. What I witnessed on the stock market was dramatic and I felt like an instrument of capital. I had the money, I had the time and I decided I didn’t want to dedicate my life to working on the Stock Exchange.

We had emerged from the crisis of 2007-2008, and in 2011 the publishing market was surrendering to the rules of economic profitability. The publishing industry has always struggled with what can be sold more easily and what is needed is to rectify this bias, not to submit to mere profitability. It’s clear that we all, in one way or another, end up yielding to the laws of the market, because without selling no one could continue; but some resistance to your catalogue is needed, a balance between those that will facilitate publishing and those names that don’t have it so easy. Striking an optimum balance is what I set out to do and it’s my job.

Over the first year, between setting the company up in 2011 and publishing the first book in 2012, we consulted booksellers and met distributors, listening to everyone... There were a lot of people eager to help. For instance, Javier Cambronero, from the UDL distributor, who passed away in 2013.

We knew we couldn’t repeat things that had already been done. In other words, we didn’t want to create a publishing project that already existed. I tell everyone who comes to me for advice, you can’t create an Anagrama [a Spanish publishing house] today. On account of the context, the authors, the people... it’s impossible to replicate a publishing experience. That’s why we were clear that we couldn’t emulate any publishing projects we liked, but we had to do it all over again. We had to find our path, taking everything that had been done well by other publishers we liked, such as Edicions de 1984, Quaderns Crema or Anagrama itself. That is, the publishers who made us readers.

I don’t know if we are a reference point, but we are accessible. We try to welcome everyone who comes to us, to advise them, to help them, just as we were when we first started out. We have to give back what we were given.

I still can’t believe it! It was a very special welcome and reception from the Booksellers’ Guild. We didn’t quite know what it meant because we had just started out, but the more time goes on the more I appreciate it. Even more than Nobel Prizes, or other awards our books have been able to earn. The Llibreter Award put us on the literary map, with a prize that awarded an idea that runs against the tide, a Dutch author, of a literature that virtually doesn’t exist among us...

For us it was and always has been a cross-cutting pillar of the project. Like everyone else, I too am a victim of the invasion of English-language literature and culture. Most of the music, films and literature we consume are in the English language. Most of what is translated is from English, and no matter how rich its culture is, it is impossible for English literature to produce as much work and that is as good and for other cultures to produce nothing. In fact, Catalan literature endures this invisibility here.

We don’t publish as many essays, but they do have a great deal of visibility. They are books on topical issues, on palpable conflicts in our midst (fake news, censorship, street protests, the role of the humanities), which I find rewarding and refreshing. I really like essays, but the genre really scared me. And all the more, publishing essays in Catalan, which is practically not done. Now I can say that it is one of the most enjoyable experiences of my work. I love narrative and it’s the foundation of Raig Verd, but essays have become an incentive and a source of discovery at the same time. We currently publish 80% of foreign authors in fiction, but essays make up almost 50-50.

Tu, calla! [You, Shut Up!] emerged from a need in a context in which a law is created – the Gag Law – to censor citizens, in this dichotomy between law and justice, which makes a law legal, but not necessarily fair. Alongside Blanca Busquets, with whom I share a special bond as well as this concern, we wanted to dig deeper into this reflection. In the end, it turned into a book because we felt we had something to say.

I think it was more hidden and less obvious at first. I may not have dared to make it so explicit, but it has become clearer over time and we have turned the publishing house into a clear tool for activism.

I don’t ask the reader for anything, and I’ve never heard our authors ask for anything from the reader. We have very generous authors, who respond to the reader with absolute humility. I’ve been lucky enough to meet most of the authors I've published and I wouldn’t say demanding. On the contrary. What’s more, what does demanding mean? Harder to read? It will all depend on what you expect from the literature. If you just want to pass the time, you might find them demanding... But it all depends on the book; we also have some that can be a source of enjoyment!

We publish ten, but this year we had to bypass our own limits. In the end, the limit of truth is what I can assume. We’re making more books, but they all go through me. Once I can’t take it on, as I’m very controlling, I get the feeling that I’m losing control of the boat and we slow down. In the end, there are publishers who issue 60 books a year without losing sight of their personality. However, the idea is to keep a limit of 16 or 18 books a year.

One thing I do very well is surround myself with very good people. I’m lucky to find people who are very good at what they do and who give it their personal touch. That everything goes through me doesn’t mean that all of Raig Verd is me.

For us, translators are the mainstay and, at the same time, they are friends. They are part of this critical thinking behind the publishing house. Aside from their commitment and making them feel valued, the conditions concerning turnaround times and payment are related to this and make their work sound.

I think that we and other independent publishers like Males Herbes and Periscopi, which are from around the same time, bring diversity, and because we don’t publish the same books; what we do is broaden the range on offer. We are not competing against one another but rather we are gaining readers in Spanish. We are allowing Catalan-speaking readers to find books that pique their interest in their language. It is up to us to increase the million readers in Catalan and, therefore, we must do a good job.

It would be time for smaller specialised independent publishers to make an appearance. And the more, the better. But not because a large or medium-sized publisher is bad, but because of the diversity they offer.

We spent two years working on publishing the first book, Temps de segona mà. La fi de l’home roig (Second-hand Time: The Demise of the Red (Wo)man), translated by Marta Rebón. When I told reporters and publishers that I had bought a book by a Russian writer about the transition from communism to capitalism, everyone frowned. They said, “Are you crazy? This won’t sell!”. And in fact, I thought I would sell 200 at most, because it was very specialised. But I had read 100 pages in French and I was determined to publish it.

It was an amazing surprise. I was walking home and they called me from TV3 [the public broadcasting network of Catalonia]. I was on the suburban train, I had no battery... It was an odyssey. When they called the publishing house, the girls started celebrating. It was really nice, but unexpected.

It was a conscious and sought-after decision. We always try to think critically about ourselves and noticed that we are not familiar with nor have we published anything about Africa. We realised that virtually nothing in the form of African literature was being published. He is one of its most prominent and leading voices. And he is also a point of reference on the subject of languages, on the reflection on the importance of different languages in Decolonising the Mind, for example.

I know you come across all sorts in the publishing world, but I’ve been very lucky to encounter people who are generous, modest, accessible... who respond very well to the kind of book we publish and the values we seek.

If she hadn’t won the Nobel Prize, I’d have said Alexievich, because of her commitment to the inaccessible and the unknown. Every year, however, I’d say a different author. At the moment I’d say Magdalena Tulli, one of the authors of resistance in the catalogue, one of the leading voices in Polish literature.

At one point I realised that, for a publishing house made up of women, we had published lots of male authors. My library mostly comprises male authors too. And that’s why we have to tackle this inertia that leads us to publish, to read, to buy books written by men. What we do a lot now is engage in research and seek them out. We sought out the women we publish — Ali Smith, Ursula K. Le Guin, Magdalena Tulli, Nnedi Okorafor, etc.

It is difficult to discuss the entire book sector or even independent publishers, but in the world of culture we are among the least affected. Bookstores have been closed for two months, a period that coincided with St. George’s Day [The Day of the Book], but we are among the least affected compared to those who need a physical audience: cinemas, theatres, concerts. If we are put on lockdown again, we can continue to sell books. I can still do my job — although the lockdown affects concentration and reconciliation is complicated — but a concert cannot be held from home.

Maybe I wasn’t sufficiently mindful until now, because as soon as we made a plea to our readers, the reaction was remarkable. Readers’ awareness of wanting projects like ours to continue and of making their contribution by buying our books is what will save us. Next year, if we can say we survived, it will be thanks to our readers.