The Catalan publishing house "Edicions 62" celebrates its 50th anniversary . During these years, the iconic publisher has put out 5,000 titles and actually it controls a catalog of over 2,000 authors, 47 of whom are Nobel laureates.
El manoscrito del segon origen ["The manuscript of the second origin"] by Manuel de Pedrolo, is the publisher's bestselling book, with more than one million copies. Its catalog also includes key works such as Nosaltres, els valencians ["We, the Valencians"] by Joan Fuster, the first book published by Edicions 62 on May 12, 1962. Created by Max Cahner and Ramon Bastardes, it had to overcome the objective of the government of the time that wanted to put away with the Catalan language and culture that they considered provincial.
Josep Maria Castellet, another member of the founding generation, had these remarks on the radio program "Senses" on Catalunya Informació: "They wanted to keep it as a provincial culture, where the ideal would be that writers write in Catalan for a Catalan audience speaking about nothing else but Catalonia, the sardana dance and folklore. I think that's why we had difficulties in publishing foreign books that we had started to translate immediately."
This Thursday, Edicions 62 commemorates its anniversary with a ceremony at CaixaForum, where the president of the Generalitat [regional government] Artur Mas as well as writers and editors will attend. There has also been published a special catalog with a cover illustrated by the artist Jaume Plensa, and in October there will start an exhibition.
(The original piece appeared on 324.cat in Catalan here.)
Note: Like most of the Catalan and Spanish publishers, Edicions 62 is not totally independent any longer but forms part of the Planeta publishing empire; this blogger does not know the exact participation but estimates that Planeta controls around 50% of Edicions 62. Edicions 62 publishes 50%+ of all titles published in Catalan.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
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