The surprise came when least expected. At a lunch called by the Formentor Foundation to present him with his gold medal, Jorge Herralde made public the fate of the Anagrama archive, the publishing house that he founded and directed for decades. “He will stay in Barcelona, ??on the floor above our offices, open to investigation. The ownership will be from the Feltrinelli Foundation and we will manage it”.
This puts an end to a long period of speculation about the destination of these collections, which contain correspondence, contracts and varied documentation relating to a wide range of the best Spanish and international authors who make up the rich catalog of Anagrama, a firm founded in 1969. According to the current editorial director of the label, Silvia Sesé, the new stage of the Archive will begin with the publication of Herralde’s correspondence with the author Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who died last November, “with whom he maintained a great friendship.” Enzensberger inaugurated the Arguments collection with Politics and crime and has published more than twenty titles in Anagrama.
The great cultural wealth that editorial archives provide to an international book capital like Barcelona has not been matched by institutional attention comparable to that given to them in France, Italy or Great Britain.
In response to requests from different sectors of the world of books, in 2015 the Biblioteca de Catalunya launched the Patrimonio de Editores y Editados portal, which initially benefited from the donation of some funds, such as those of Gustavo Gili or Plaza
The also very rich collection of Tusquets publishing house, which in many ways had a trajectory parallel to Anagrama as an emblematic stamp of the democratic Transition and at the same time a standard-bearer for quality literature, and which Beatriz de Moura carefully catalogued, ended up in the National Library of Spain in Madrid, where he considered that they would be better treated and preserved. As a result of this donation, concern spread in the Catalan capital about the possibility that other Barcelona stamps opted for the same destination for their deposits.
The decision finally made by Herralde and his team (his wife Lali Gubern is the first person in charge of the file) opens a formula for civil society that can be a reference. The Italian publisher Carlo Feltrinelli acquired Anagrama from his friend Herralde in 2010. The Foundation that bears his last name, located in Milan, has made available to researchers a large collection of documents from European social movements, as well as their editorial documentation itself. In France, the prestigious Gallimard house also manages its own archive, a source of constant studies and publications.
Basilio Baltasar recalled yesterday that the Formentor Foundation, which directs and organizes the annual literary award with his name, had once created an honorary committee made up of Antoine Gallimard, Jorge Herralde and the late Roberto Calasso because “there is no other publisher in all of Europe who have the profile and heritage of these three. Herralde’s books have presided over the life of our generation, and we cannot imagine our library without them”.
Us neither.
