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THE OBSERVATORY
by Xavier Güell
Editor of "Barcelona Economia".

Months are passing and the current stagnation in the economic situation at world level is showing no sign of improving. There appears to be a mixed bag of recovery and regression indices which excludes any possibility of foreseeing any minimally definite trend. In consequence, under such troubled circumstances, it seems particularly convenient to focus our analysis on some of the basic large-scale trends rather than merely go into detail about the erratic variations of some indicators.

While I was considering the best approach to my presentation of the traditional synthesis of the evolution of economic activity in Barcelona and the surrounding metropolitan area over the two middle quarters of 2002, it struck me that it might be interesting to start with a short comparative "bulletin" about the present situation versus that of two years ago, at a time which can be considered the beginning of the end of the economy's upward cycle that had started in the mid nineteen nineties.

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Fashion, viewed from Barcelona..
by Margarita Rivière

The journalist and writer Margarita Rivière, author of books such as "Lo cursí y el poder de la moda" (Tasteless glitter and the power of fashion) or "La muerte de la moda en la era de los mutantes" (The death of fashion in the mutants' era), states that Barcelona has let itself be dazzled by French, English and Italian designs for far too long, and she further argues that it would be good for the sector to go for the "creative risk" option which, in her opinion, is the only way to make yourself a place in the world of fashion.

(...) Some people talk about the death of fashion; the reasoning on which they base this statement is that the larger the narket, the smaller the space left for imagination and innovation. According to this line of thinking, fashion is industry and entertainment at the same time; artists are yielding ground to managers and the latter plan and condition people's looks to such an extent that it does not matter anymore whether they live in Barcelona, in Tokio or in Mexico city.
The second line of thinking is not less risky : it advocates moving against the current trends, being ahead of one's time, searching for something different and, why not, discovering something new, even though it seems as if everything had already been invented. According to this line, the designer ought to involve himself in all stages in the process : from the fabric and colours up to the point when everything is prepared for the idea to materialize. This is precisely what craftsmen did in the past, even though it is somewhat more complicated for the artist to achieve total control over the product nowadays : that would require a very complete creative vision and a real knowledge of current society.
Let's say that the first line of thinking has already been thoroughly explored. (...)

Accordingly, now the two key lines of action are prospecting work and imagination. Because fashion cannot exist without that capacity for finding out which persona we'll want to adopt the day after tomorrow, which mental picture we are forming of ourselves in the future. This does not have anything to do with having all the means necessary to plan and condition - by making the maximum use of advertising and marketing - our outward appearance as well as our brains. The planners live in the present. Those who use their imagination live in the future. And fashion, all things considered, is the design of the future. That is precisely where its real attractiveness lies.

All these challenges have been brought out in the open now in Barcelona's fashion world. They are now being explored and thoroughly analyzed. It seems as if - at long last - this country is taking a traditionally frivolous issue such as fashion seriously. When people in Madrid realized that it was an instrument of power over the future, it proved to be an additional stimulus to progress. But I think that, when facing up to those challenges, the city of Barcelona has a special advantage : its tradition as a city which, being peripheral, has had perforce to be imaginative. Furthermore, it is also an advantage in this business not to be standing in the middle of the front window, considering that it is essentially a breeding ground for artifice, pretentiousness and self-praise. Finally, what is really important, in the sphere of fashion as much as in other fields, is to help people have a better life. And this is no easy task.

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The senior citizens' revolution.
by Gabriel Pernau

The United Nations Organization estimates that, in the whole world, there are presently 380.000 persons aged 100 and over, and foresees that this figure will shoot up to 3,2 million people in 2050. The fact that the centenarian population is likely to multiply tenfold in less than half a century is not accidental but rather a consequence of the progressive - and very rapid - increase in human life expectancy. Let's see what is happening in Catalonia : in 1998, people had a life expectancy of 79,3 years, but it should now be of at least 80,3 years because, according to estimates issued by the "Institut Català d'Estadística" (Catalan Statistical Office), this figure increases at a rate of three months per year or, what amounts to the same, one year every four years. Therefore, if the current rate of increase remains the same, in 2042, there ought to be more than one million and a half senior citizens aged 65 and over, and life expectancy will average up to 90.

So, in less than fifty years, the elderly population will increase from 600 to 2.000 million people; and, for the first time in history, there will be more senior citizens over 60 than young people under 15. These are average figures which concern the world as a whole, because the developed world already reached that point as early as 1998.
(...) Politicians are increasingly aware of the fact that the problems associated with that new reality will obviously get worse and worse. There will be an increasing number of old people who will live alone and/or on a low or non-existent income, which will obviously imply higher public expenditure on medicines and a greater need for home helps, specialized medical care and/or hospital beds. In short, the public health service network will have to be improved and extended.
Some experts are warning us that, in the foreseeable future, the socioeconomic balance in Western societies will be at risk. But the phenomenon they point at as a major culprit in causing that situation is not as much the ever-increasing ederly population,... as the ever-decreasing number of young people.

And that imbalance threatens to become even more accentuated. Basically because it has been estimated that Europe will experience a further decrease in population between now and 2050 (from 370 down to 363 million inhabitants), but that the percentage of people aged 60 and over will increase from 19,84 to 33,26 per cent of the total population !
(...) Who will take care of those senior citizens ? The case of those who live alone is only an example. There are others who, even though they live with other people, still need help from the outside. This is the case of one person over 70 out of five. And what about those who are unable to lead an autonomous life ? How will they be looked after ?
(...) Jordi Vizcaíno explains that current lifestyle, health, economic and social standards are very different from those of some years ago. "At the present time, it is common to find pre-retired persons who can still expect to live for another thirty years, even though there belong to that age group we call "senior citizens". Nobody considers them to be old. Actual old age starts at 75 or 80 nowadays, and all these changes are reflected in those people's attitudes. Years ago, they were entering a final stage, now they start to discover the positive aspects of retirement".

(...) "There has been a switch from a collective viewed and treated as an homogenous group of old people wearing berets and walking sticks who spent the day sitting on a bench, to one which is even more heterogeneous that the adult age group", says Vizcaíno. "it is true that some retired people are in a bad state of health, but a greater and greater number of them keep themselves fit. The ones who complain about their ailments are those over 90, which is quite normal. However, the retired population also includes many 60-year-olds who do not have those problems". And these are the people who want to continue to play an active part in society. (...)
The newest generations of grandfathers and grandmothers do not want to lag behind in the race for knowledge. And this explains why the different Internet and computer-science courses organized by public institutions and private organizations are being so successful among retired people. For many of them, to win a place on one of those courses has become a kind of dream.

"They refuse to consider retirement as a full stop or a sort of break-up in their life and they view it as a stage of life as enriching as the previous ones", asserts Pere Meseger, a former bank director who is now the vice-chairman of Conex. "We cannot obviate the fact that, for many people, retirement is a frustating experience. Working people are constantly fed professional "inputs" and, when they retire, they suffer a sudden and brutal feeling of deprivation that many have great difficulty assinilating. Society does not prepare us for such a change. Enterprises function in a way that leads every worker to think he or she is indispensable, so that they throw themselves into their work heart and soul... Then, suddenly, they find themselves "retired". Our organization tries to make those people realize that there are many things in life apart from work and that being unemployed is not the same as being inactive, which is pernicious. We have to use our energy to keep on having our say and contributing to the community, which is what gives us a sense of satisfaction".

(...) Senior citizens constitute therefore an attractive market sector in which enterprises are now taking an active interest. "Multinational companies view them as a juicy market for their products. Because older people not only travel, which has become a cliché; they also take care of their bodies, they are consumers of traditional products such as clothes or household appliances, and they are a major contributing factor to the growth of the "care services" market which includes high quality homes - those that charge 1.800 euros a month -, home help services or tele-alarm systems", explains this City Council department head.
"This change also has noticeable effects upon advertising" - he adds - "There is a new image which no longer fits the old compassionate message addressed to "those poor grandads"; older people are now viewed as fully-fledged citizens, active people with rights of their own and a lot of free time to enjoy life". (...)
Time. That is just the point. Older people are privileged to be in possession of one of the scantiest goods in a society as competitive as ours.

(...) Vizcaíno says that, "at the present time, governments are ruling for the sake of a given segment of the population", and he adds that political parties will attempt to control any significant new social body. And now the senior citizens' specific weight as voters has become a decisive factor in any election. According to recent estimates, in 2050, the voters aged 50 and over will account for half the electoral register in almost every country within the European Union. Does this prospect have anything to do with the fact that, a few variations notwithstanding, the amounts of state pensions are being maintained in most Western countries, even though experts usually advise against it ?
(...) Economists are raising many questions regarding future developments : "They refer to the cost of dependence and ask themselves how care services will be financed; they refer to the market formed by such a large number of old people, to the need for a new approach to the viability of the pension system and for a public health network with the capacity for taking charge of chronically sick and dependant people...". Vizcaíno's sentence ends with suspension points. There are many questions to which we still have to find an answer. (...)

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The convoluted returnn of Civil War images.
by Xavier Tarraubell i Mirabet
Director of the City's Historical Records Office

The City's Historical Records Office has received as a bequest a collection of photographs of Spanish Civil War scenes which the experts consider to be exceptional. These 273 photographs, which show the different aspects of everyday life in Barcelona while bombs were being dropped onto the city, were for many years in the hands of of Juan Lapuente Belenguer, who had served as the Spanih Consul in Cape Town during the war. Later, Hilman Bernardt, a long-standing legal representative of the Lapuente family, kept the collection which, after 66 years of travelling all over the world, has now been handed over to the city of Barcelona by his daughter, Marian Roberts. (...)

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Jaume Pagès:
"The September 11th events have emphasized how timely the Forum is.".
by Jordi Casanovas

The new managing director of the Barcelona Forum 2004 reminds those associations that are still reluctant to join in the event that, after all, they all share and work for the same human values : the search for peace and sustainability, the need for a true dialogue between cultures, etc... And he considers that such a tragic event as the attack on the Twin Towers does not bring into question the holding of the Forum but, on the contrary, that it stands as another justification for the meeting.
Jaume Pagès (Girona, 1946) was appointed managing director of the Barcelona Forum 2004 in April this year. An industrial engineer and a lecturer on System Engineering, Automation and Industrial Computer Science who served as rector of the Polytecnic University of Catalonia from 1994 until early 2002, Pagès considers that his appointment opens the way to a period of stability within the Forum's organizational structure, which will allow its members to carry on working with renewed determination and without disruptions on the preparations for such a complex and unprecedented event.
· Josep Antoni Acebillo, chief architect at Barcelona's City Hall, stated in an article published in our magazine one year ago that it was still necessary to work very hard in order to make ordinary citizens support and empathize with the Forum project. Do you think that this particular goal has been achieved ? What steps are being taken in that direction ?
Until last October, we have been fostering collective participation in the preparation of the Forum's programme of events through an Internet site called "Opina" ("Give us your opinion") created in collaboration with the "Universitat Oberta de Catalunya" (Catalonia's Open University), which has served to provide all willing people with an opportunity to put forward their own ideas concerning the spheres of activity they are more especially interested in. The first draft of the Forum's programme of activities, once enriched by the suggestions all those people have contributed - by mid-otober, some 300 had already been accepted -, will serve as a basis for the final programme which will be submitted to to the board of directors early next year.
Where promotional action is concerned, we are now working at setting the stage for a series of projects, such as a movie or an itinerant exhibition, that will serve as instruments for presenting people with information about the event from city to city. (...)
Anyway, we have to admit that, for the time being, the amount of public attention being paid to the Barcelona Forum 2004 at an international level is still rather modest. But this is understandable because it is not really a mass meeting, as a sports event can be, and there are no precedents for that kind of gathering.
· One of the Forum's main objetives is to vinculate non govermental organizations to the development of the project.
Yes, this is true. We have tried to involve all those organizations that, one way or another, share our goals, but not exclusively because they are non governmental, but also as far as their work is connected with the development or the conditions of peace, no matter if they are NGO or not. We hope that any organization interested in these matters will be willing to participate in the Forum by bringing in their own points of view and experiences.
· Which role are associations from other countries meant to play ?
Obviously, a number of bodies from other countries will attend the event and expose their proposals. As an action aimed at international diffusion, we could emphasize the initiative carried out by several associations from different Latin-American countries such as Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chili and Mexico, which, prompted by the Forum's proposals, have convened three international conferences on issues connected with the three central themes of the Forum 2004 : the first one, centred around the conditions of peace, will be held in Atlanta; the second one, the chief feature of which is the sustainable city, will take place in Valparaíso; and the third one, centred around cultural diversity, will be held in Montevideo. The conclusions that will be drawn from those three conferences will be subsequently expounded at the Barcelona Forum.
· Is there any danger of uproar by some radical movements as it usually happens every time an important international meeting is held ?
There is an element which clearly makes the Forum different from other meetings that have been more strongly questioned by the anti-globalization movement. All those meetings had some sort of connection with power, they assembled people with high-level decision-making capacity on either political or economic issues. They were summit meetings where heads of states and governments assembled, or meetings organized by the World Trade Organization, the Davos Forum, and a few other gatherings of the same type. But the Barcelona Forum does not have anything to do with them; we are no more than a body or a consortium that is intending to organize a cultural event and, therefore, we do not have much potential for influencing people, and even less decision-making capacity in either political or economic terms. On the other hand, true to its nature as a cultural event, the Forum is open to anyone willing to take part in it, provided that they agree to follow reasonable rules of conduct. But there are actually no reasons why it should incur the wrath of the anti-globalization - or "anti-whatever" - organizations, among other reasons because the aim of the Forum is precisely to encourage public reflection upon globalization and its effects on culture and, vice versa, upon the effects of culture on the globalization process.
· Will the event be attended mostly by local people or are you trying to attract participants from outside Barcelona ?
Well, there will be international participation in the conferences, even though, obviously, it will be a small number of people, not millions... It is to be expected that the most multitudinous events will attract people from surrounding places, let's say from within an aera of 500 km around Barcelona, but we also expect people from Madrid and all those who will take advantage of their summer holiday in neighbouring areas to pay us a visit.
· There have ben a few mentions of the possibility that the Forum might be held again in other cities. Is it feasible and desirable that the Forum should have some kind of continuity?
The Forum was not originally conceived as an event which had to be necessarily repeated, but the possibility has not been explicitly excluded. This is a question which does not depend on our own decision, but rather on the fact that there might be people willing to take over the job. We know of cities that have expressed their interest in the project; we have provided them with the necessary information and we are prepared to help them insofar as we can by sharing our experience, but this is an issue which is outside our range of responsibility : the decision to organize another Forum in the future is exclusively up to them.
· Do you think that the September 11th events and all that happened afterwards could have an adverse effect on the Forum ?
The terrorist attacks came as a very serious blow to the whole developed world and, more particularly, to the United States, and I think that they have greatly contributed to make people reflect over matters that are closely connected with the main issues on which the Forum is centred : cultural diversity and respect among cultures, sustainability and the conditions of peace. And they will undoubtedly continue to arouse reflections of this kind for a long time to come; the process has by no means come to a close. For us, September 11th is without any doubt a black date but, at the same time, it has emphasized how timely the Forum is. As a matter of fact, it looks as though the idea of the Forum had arisen after September 11th, when it was actually prior to it. The promoters of the event just had the right idea at the right time.
(...)

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Book publishing, an Identifying Feature of Barcelona.
by Joan Clos

In the 19th century, a Barcelona printer had the idea of breaking away from the old routine of publishing titles one by one as they came to the printers, with no order or planning, and decided to create a collection of books that he called a "Library of Literature". This man, called Manuel Rivadeneyra, made the leap from the traditional print shop to the modern publishing firm. I am not sure the cultural climate of Barcelona can take credit for this development, because in fact the collection was brought out in Madrid. It was, however, directed by Carles Aribau, who was living there-it is common knowledge that the famous author of Oda a la Pàtria (Ode to the Fatherland) used his seminal poem to express the nostalgia he felt whilst living in the central plain. Rivadeneyra, who went down in history as the publisher of the newspaper El Vapor, an organ for new ideas, and a famous edition of Don Quijote, was a restless and active man fond of travelling, a spirit which I feel I can be attributed to the intellectual climate of Barcelona, torn between the Renaixença and industrialisation, between the incipient scientific and technical culture of the 19th century and the secular literary culture that was then being recovered.
Whatever the case may be, Rivadeneyra started his Library of Literature in 1846. A few years later, in 1860, a man from the counties who worked as a labourer in the demolition of the city walls, founded the publishing firm that bore his name, Espasa. From breaking stones to Linotype: this is the spirit of the city. As early as 1905 he began to publish the renowned Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada. The publishing firm, which had by then achieved success and a prestigious reputation, was inherited by his sons, who continued to publish the Encyclopaedia. Another interesting fact is that for several years the two Espasa brothers went into association with a worker of the firm, who was their brother-in-law; a man called Salvat, who was soon to leave the company to set up his own firm. In 1923, now run by his heirs, it became Salvat Editors, which was later to establish subsidiaries in South America. We can leave the story here, but I thought it was of interest to recall this process, which is highly symbolic and denotes a great cultural tradition as is proper to a city that had just become aware of itself.

A Centre of Literary Culture
It is important that to note that cultural ambition was linked to the great leap forward that the city made with the Exhibition of 1888, because culture is somehow bound to the identity of Barcelona. Barcelona cannot be understood without taking into account this role as a nursery, a crucible for culture, a soundbox for influences from inside and outside the city that forms the basis for its modern identity. This is so much so that in periods when its cultural power has declined due to specific historical circumstance, the city has also waned, and the moral and civic recovery has taken place in parallel to the cultural resurgence. Thus, the historical anecdote is justified because publishing forms the backbone of this cultural identity, understood not only as a very powerful industry-which it is-but also as a set of operations and impulses that pivot around books as an object of culture. In other words, Barcelona is a receiver and sender of literary culture through its actors and instruments.
If we consider the process that culminates (and at the same time commences) with a book, we can see that Barcelona covers all the stages with consummate skill. There is a very dynamic creative environment in the two languages. Authors have agents-names need not be mentioned-who help them to get their books published, who disseminate the works around the world and in return bring authors from all parts who find here excellent translators. In the middle are the publishers as the creators of publishing policies, as selectors of works, and also as managers of an industry with a very high turnover that-of course with ups and downs-becomes consolidated and grows. And when the book has been printed and bound, there is the whole network that guarantees the sales: distribution, promotion and bookshops. After a crisis that aroused more fears than were justified, bookshops are now becoming consolidated with a wider and more modern range of services. Finally we have the readers, of whom there are never enough but in our case the number is sufficient, and the numbers are rising if one takes into account a recent phenomenon, the return to libraries, which today have thousands of users each year.
The publishing industry of Catalonia and Barcelona is thus a complete and exhaustive phenomenon that embraces all types of products, from encyclopaedias to illustrated books, from children's books to manuals, from literature to translation, without forgetting the two ends of the chain, the bibliophiles and the readers of comics, which represent an increasing proportion of the annual production of printed paper. An interesting fact is that text books for all levels of education and training, from the first year of primary school to the last year of university, represent almost 40% of the total production. The quality of text books is important because we are in the knowledge society. The ability to process information, to create a vehicle suitable for thought, science, technology and culture, is one of the basic tools for operating as a collective in a world in which ideas are more important than strength or power, a world in which it is essential to be a sender and not only a receiver. One more fact: 34% of publishing firms work in multimedia, and the figure rises to 86% among the large publishing firms, for which it is easier to diversify the media they work in. The new technologies are thus not alien to us; nor are the processes of concentration and the transformation of our publishing firms into multinationals, an ambivalent process that has both negative and positive aspects, but is inevitable in a powerful, dynamic and ambitious industry.

The Capital of Catalan Culture
Two further basic facts are linked to this industry. One is obvious: Barcelona is the capital of Catalan culture and specifically of culture in the Catalan language. This culture could not have grown, prospered and entered a dialogue with other cultures if it had not been operating in the setting of a major capital. A setting and a soundbox. In the specific case of literature, without underestimating publishing initiatives in the other Catalan-speaking countries and in other cities of Catalonia, there is no doubt that the publishing industry based in Barcelona has been a very powerful soundbox and therefore a stimulus to creation: the opportunity of publishing and possibly of being translated into other languages is not only essential, but has become a stimulus for literary creation. It is a sign of normality, precisely because the products offered by the publishers are many, varied and-why not-commercial, within of the physical limits of the market established by demography and the capacity for dissemination of our culture. It is no small thing to have a well-established identity amid the turmoil of the general world. Culture, particularly if it is linked to an industry, is a good point of attraction, which links us to the land and gives us a sense of diversity, an advantage of critical analysis amid the omnipresent messages.
However, this industrial and cultural strength of Barcelona is not translated into a sufficiently powerful image of the city as a publishing capital. We have an image of excellence in book production, but we cannot compete with the international importance of Frankfurt or even Milan. There are probably many reasons of different types for this shortcoming, but I have the feeling that we should not be content to merely understand the phenomenon. Barcelona has been the European platform of much Latin American literature; it has been the entrance point to the Iberian Peninsula of international authors: it is, as I have said, a centre of creation and a city with a considerable cultural mass. These factors must be combined in order to build the international image of Barcelona as a publishing capital. I understand that the sectors involved, all the components of this industry, are thinking in this direction. Proposals have been made, there have been discussions at the Book Fair, and initiatives have been put forward.
The City Council must be attentive and offer any collaboration that may be necessary. Barcelona has sufficient merits to achieve this international image, to participate on equal terms in the dialogue with the major actors in international publishing. It is important to consolidate the industry and to stimulate culture. While this process is underway, the City Council is doing what it must: fostering basic readers (there are no writers who were not first readers) through the public network of libraries, a large number of initiatives aimed at schoolchildren, dissemination campaigns, cultural activities. We are creating new readers and facilitating access to books for veteran readers, so that the cycle can continue forward, always renewed, always thrilling.

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Barcelona as the publishing capital

Barcelona maintains its traditional place as a leader in publishing, a sector that in recent years has undergone profound changes in line with the global book production and marketing trends and reading habits.
This Central Notebook offers an overview of the sector in Barcelona from the dual viewpoint of creation and dissemination of culture, from its origins in the Renaissance to the present time, when the new dynamics that we have mentioned has made it necessary to reposition many traditional companies as subsidiaries of larger ones, even multinationals, but at the same time small publishers have made an effort to create a carefully tailored and differentiated product of great quality.
The articles were written by specialist journalists, scholars of the sector and some of its most important figures, who present the situation of the industry, go over its history and raise questions about its future. The main figures of production in Barcelona complete this general vision.

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The new (Dantean) book circle
by Carles Geli
Coordinator of the Llibres supplement of El Periódico de Catalunya.

Do Catalan publishers and booksellers know what the zone of confidence of a consumer is? Or do they both know the formula for calculating the rotation of funds? If not, they are in for a hard time, because the Catalan oasis is no longer functioning in the globalised publishing sector: the spiral of multinationals and the logic of books as a product (a cultural product, but still ultimately a product, like a video console for computer games or a yoghurt) make it impossible to take refuge in the specificity of the Catalan market (a linguistic domain of 5,670,000 persons around the world who speak Catalan) and far less to seek refuge from all evils in the strong tradition of the sector in Catalonia (261 registered publishers in 2001). The favourite sport of modern times is to break with traditions.
It makes no difference where one begins to explain this increasingly Dantean circle that the world of books has become in Catalonia and in the rest of the Western world. One could begin with the act of reading, the reasons that lead people to read: 85% of the public state that they read as a form of entertainment or leisure. The reasons put forward only a couple of decades ago, such as increasing one's level of culture (now 18%) and professional improvement (3.3%), lag far behind.
If books are therefore today just another product of the leisure industry (or they are seen in this way by the all-important consumers), it is not surprising that the figures of the sector have also reached industrial levels: 60,267 titles were published in 2001 (2.3% more than the previous year), with 165 books coming out in Spain every day, including Saturdays and Sundays. And there seems to be no end to the growth: since 1996, the average annual increase in titles has been 6%. This is too much in itself, but it is even more spectacular and scandalous when compared with the number of titles published in France (49,000 in 2000) and the US (64,000 in 2000), countries with far more powerful languages and linguistic domains that those of Spanish or Catalan.
The change in the publishing panorama has become apparent in Spain in the last five years, but this only represents the late arrival of a phenomenon that has been occurring in the rest of the Western countries since the early nineties. The tip of the iceberg of the process is in the fierce concentration of publishers, which has never before been seen in this area. (...)
The world of books is, indeed, governed by a new dynamics today: gone are the companies with a human and family dimension, in which there was a direct and intimate contact between authors and publishers, the general profit margins were about 3-4%, and a book that sold well was allowed to compensate for an earlier or later book that did not. The dynamics of the multinationals now requires the application of far stricter financial and commercial criteria. Profit margins are therefore now between 12 and 15% and the managing directors of publishing firms demand that each book be profitable in itself.
In this new world one must sell many copies in order to achieve a high turnover in such large groups with such high expenses. And only authors with a brand name, those that guarantee high sales, can reach figures of tens of thousands. (...)
The mega-groups thus purchase or set up their own chains of bookshops, which are generally very large (the Planeta Group, with La Llar del Llibre, Santillana, with Crisol, and Edicions 62 with La Llibreria del Raval are three local examples). (…)
Born of capitalism, with inflexible ratios of space to investment and the pressure of high rentals and staffing costs, the chains need a high sales volume that can, of course, only be achieved with best-sellers. (…) The situation thus descends to another Dantean circle, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world: publishers are beginning to pay money to keep books on the shelves of bookshops and, in a situation of total corruption, on the lists of recommen
ded books and best-sellers. (...)

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An X-ray of publishing (with some dark patches)
by Sergi Doria
Journalist and literary critic

Without wishing to make an abusive use of figures, the statistical chronicle of publishing suggests changes in the strategies of book production and the need to encourage reading. But let us get to the point. How has publishing evolved in the last fifteen years? This is explained to us by Segimon Borràs, secretary of the Guild of Publishers of Catalonia: "With membership of the European Union, the sector had to change from a protected economy to a system of free trade and globalisation; this put an end to protected paper quotas, subsidies for export, credit for circulating capital and tax deductions of 11 or 12 percent". Another major aspect was the redistribution of the type of works, the fall in sales in instalments (dictionaries/encyclopaedias), and the effect of new technologies that led to the progressive diversification of production in order to compensate for falling sales with other products and new sales channels. The third question stressed by Borràs is "the cycle of mergers and concentrations, both in publishing and in the marketing channels: the appearance of large chains, the conversion of bookshops into leisure centres (FNAC is an example) and the continual acquisition of publishing firms by transnational groups". (…)
Sales are not rising, or only slightly, but publishing firms are continually bringing out titles. Book publishing has entered a dangerous spiral, a mutation that strips it of its cultural value and turns it into just one more commercial product. (...)
What genres are most interesting for readers? Literature is the leader, with 22.5 percent of sales: double the figure of ten years ago and 5.5 percent more than last year. It is followed by non-scholarly non-fiction at 21 percent, whereas the sales of dictionaries and encyclopaedias, as pointed out by Segimon Borràs, have fallen by more than 37 percent. By categories, paperbacks have been consolidated at 32 million copies, showing a growth of 12.2 percent. (…)
This is the general situation of book publishing. What about Catalonia? A strong publishing centre, it still maintains its leadership with a turnover of Ä1,445,670,000. (…) Books in Catalan have risen by 2.8 percent over last year and now represent one third of the books published. (…)
The great problem that must be faced by bookshops today is the avalanche of new books that are obstinately finding their way onto the shelves. (…)
The time has come to apply the recommendation made over seventy years ago by the publisher Bernard Grasset in "La Chose littéraire", in which he denounced the compulsion of fashion that enshrined talents which proved to be spurious: "Our trade? The courage to reject and not favour this overflow of mediocrities among which the true values are smothered". Publishing less and better, dealing with a problematic economic and cultural situation: these are the challenges that must be faced by the publishing world on the threshold of 2003. As in the Chinese ideograms, the word "crisis" means at the same time "danger" and "opportunity".



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Barcelona and the Spanish and Latin American market
by Josep Lluis Monreal
Chairman of the Océano Group

My first memories as a publisher were in the early nineteen-fifties. Barcelona was then-and is still-one of the most important publishing centres in the world, faithful to its tradition as an industrious city of the graphic arts that had impressed the Man from La Mancha three and a half centuries before. (…)
On my first journey to Latin America, I learned a lesson that would mark my whole life as a publisher, and in the almost forty-five years that have gone by since then, despite the economic problems and difficult times that have been suffered in Latin America, there has not been a single day in which it has not been ratified by the facts. The lesson was that due to its potential for growth and its demand, the objective importance of the Spanish-speaking American market is enormous. And it therefore offers enormous possibilities for publishing companies in Barcelona and the whole of Spain.
From this early lesson I have drawn many good conclusions in the course of my professional life. They can all be summarised in a few simple words: the homeland of a publishing firm is none other than the language in which it publishes. (…)
This is a common language that does not imply a common mentality or language, at least not in all aspects. An essential factor to bear in mind for those who wish to create content for the American markets is the variety of national identities and idiosyncrasies. (…)
Though Latin America suffers economic crises with a certain frequency (we are seeing this now in the case of Argentina), I am optimistic about its markets. This is because today no one can deny that Catalan and Spanish publishers have managed to create and develop on the American continent companies with national and pan-American conditions and policies, within this common homeland of the language that we all share.
It is also because in recent years we are witnessing the phenomenon of new technologies, which have been a cause for great concern about the future of books, whereas for me, on the contrary, they confirm the good health of book publishing and the excellent health of the publishing sector in general. This is simply because a publisher is no more nor less than a creator of content. (…)

Page 43
Catalan-language publishers have lost their fear
by Lluís Bonada
Journalist

In the last few years the Catalan publishing sector has shown new strength and enthusiasm. Publishers working in this sector have lost their fear, and have shown new proof of great imagination. In many cases the progress made has been spectacular. This is a tendency that started a few years ago and has been intensified in the last two years.
Four facts have shaped the situation. Firstly, there has been an expansion of the two large publishing groups, the 62 Group and the Enciclopèdia Catalana Group. Secondly, there has been a consolidation, growth or revival of some personal publishing firms catering for the general public, such as Quaderns Crema belonging to Jaume Vallcorba; La Campana belonging to Isabel Martí and Josep Maria Espinàs; La Bromera belonging to Josep Gregori, and Edicions de 1984 belonging to Josep Cots, the last of which has been recovered. In the field of essays and scholarly and university history, Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat is showing great vitality and stability. Thirdly, Spanish-language groups and publishers have firmly penetrated the market through collections and autonomous publishing firms that have been set up or acquired. (…) Fourthly, new publishing firms have appeared, some of which seem to be soundly based and able to survive, such as Ara Llibres, belonging to the young but experienced publisher Ernest Folch, who was sensible enough to leave aside fiction, which is a very difficult market for a new publisher today. (…)
All of this has led to a new publishing environment and a considerable improvement in supply. Book publishing in Catalan has undergone a facelift, and not only because of the modernisation of book design, one of the fields in which most progress has been made, particularly by the publishers of the 62 Group and Columna, the new Magrana of RBA, and La Campana. New vigour has also been created through the policy of backing house authors, who soon become popular and gain popularity each year. (…). Furthermore, new products that have been created by the commissioning of new series, and attention to genres other than the novel such as essays for the general public, journalistic books, memoirs, cookery books, guides and manuals, and travel stories. (…)
Publishers have also undergone a facelift, in which the change of generation has been decisive. Three major figures stand out: Miquel Alzueta, Oriol Castanys and Jaume Vallcorba. (…)
The Enciclopèdia Catalan Group has increased the rate of publication, both of poetry and of fiction, and has shown great ingenuity in the line of history and essays for the general public published by Pòrtic, and travel literature published by Proa. (…)

Page 46
Long live the crisis
by Ernest Folch
Director of Ara Llibres

Seldom have publishers agreed so closely on a single subject: the publishing world is in crisis. Large and small publishers disagree about the reasons for the current situation and even the solutions to it, but no one questions the fact that we are at a decisive moment of profound and probably irreversible changes in the Catalan-language publishing sector. I will first try to explain what the current crisis consists of and then present the role that must be played now by small and independent publishers. (…)
In the last few years, supply has far exceeded demand, and it was totally impossible for the amount of new titles in the bookshops to be absorbed by the readers, however willing they were and however much they increased in number. (…)
What is in crisis is a certain publishing model, so long live the crisis! The time has finally come for moderation and common sense (…) and therefore for small, independent publishers. Being small is not enough to successfully overcome the current situation: one must also be outside any large structure, autonomous and independent. Our role is the same as always, but the difference now is that we will certainly come out of the current situation reinforced, because it has been shown that the way that small firms understand publishing is now more suitable than ever. Common sense is being established in the print runs (if you know you will sell 1500, why print 4000?), rationalisation in advances (how can advances of 20,000 euros be paid to authors who sell fewer than 3000 copies?) and the books that are published are treated with care (how is it possible that some publishers do not have time to promote their books because they publish so many?). As you can see, the new model is quite simply to go back to what has always been done! After years of collective madness, with the large publishing firms full of executives and empty of publishers, what many of us predicted, and a few people did not wish to hear, has finally come about. (…)


Page 49
The function of small publishing firms
A collection of opinions: Sergi Doria

This article was drawn up from the responses of Josep Cots, of Edicions de 1984, and Isabel Martí, co-founder with Josep M. Espinàs of La Campana, to a questionnaire on their respective histories as publishers, the history and the current reality of their companies and their points of view on the peculiar dynamics of small publishers.
As Josep Cots recalls, "Everything began in 1984 with a meeting of a group of friends: from debates on the figure of Orwell and his role in the Civil War in Catalonia, there arose the plan of setting up a publishing firm under the emblematic name of his chief work 1984, incorporating significantly in the name of the firm the preposition "of" ("Editions of 1984") in order to stress the dependence and force the readers to wonder about the reason for such a name: Edicions de 1984." This marked the start of a publishing firm that lasted until 1989, when for diverse personal circumstances there was a small Diaspora that made it necessary to suspend the basic activities for seven years. In 1996, two of the founder members started again with new ideas but with the same spirit, and in 2000 a new member joined the current team.
La Campana was founded in 1985 by Josep M. Espinàs and Isabel Martí, of whom the latter is now the publisher and majority shareholder. (…)
In speaking of a publishing philosophy, Isabel Marti mentions two basic criteria in the trajectory of La Campana: "No more than 15-17 titles per year, i.e. the will to not grow (growth is a debatable sign of progress and soundness) and publishing only the books in which we feel we can place our full attention". (…)
Isabel Martí does not wish to state platitudes on the "evils" of the large groups and the "original goodness" of small publishers. ( …) With regard to the current situation of publishing in Catalan, Cots stresses the role of small publishers at a time when theoretically most of the population can read Catalan without difficulty. (…)
Among the shortcomings of the Catalan cultural panorama, Cots mentions the lack of ideas, of essays and translated works by foreign non-fiction writers of all types and all subjects for all publics. She places great emphasis on "the failure of the cultural policies of the government and the opposition, which instead of favouring the stimulation of ideas, a critical capacity and the ability to think and (in this the supply of essays is essential) is understood as a servitude to the narrowest partisan and parochial interests, which prevent us from freeing ourselves from the reactionary Spanish culture". (…)

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PUBLISHING IN BARCELONA: HISTORICAL NOTES
by Manuel Llanas
Lecturer at the University of Vic

As in all European cities where the new invention of the printing press was imported, Barcelona was filled with German printers (and foreign printers in general) in the last third of the 15th century, when only four Catalan printers are documented (Pere Posa, Pere Miquel, Gabriel Pou and Bartomeu Labarola, all four based in the Catalan capital). Perhaps no other edition illustrates this phenomenon so well as the second edition of Tirant lo Blanc, printed in Barcelona in 1497. (…)
For economic, demographic and cultural reasons, Barcelona has since that time held an undisputed hegemony in Catalan publishing. It was also the first place in Catalonia where a book was printed, though there is no unanimous agreement on the title and the date. Today the most reliable scholars consider that it was Ethica. Politica. Oeconomica by Aristotle. (…)
Though German printers were overwhelmingly predominant in the infancy of printing, in the 16th century the great majority were French and Provençal (such as Carles Amorós, Pere Montpezat and Claudi Bornat), some of whom came to Catalonia to learn the trade in the workshops of the German printers. (…)
In the course of the 17th century the decadence that had started in the second half of the 16th century continued, partly because books were subject to a set of legal restrictions, censure, costs, and for the first time taxes (such as the tax on imported paper), which were applied because of the financial difficulties of a state impoverished by the wars. Though the print runs were between 1,000 and 3,000 copies, the typography was extremely modest and mediocre. (…) The most stimulating novelty of this century, however, was the appearance of embryonic forms of the press, the newssheets that under the names "news", "accounts", "letters", "gazettes", "descriptions" and others focused on episodes of international affairs and proliferated greatly due to the wars of Catalonia against France and Castile and particularly the War of the Reapers. (…)
The situation of publishing in the seventeenth century began with the defeat of Catalonia in the War of Succession, which among other consequences led to the introduction of the very restrictive Spanish legislation on books, and the awarding to the University of Cervera (founded in 1717) of the privilege of printing books intended for teaching. (…)
In summary, the situation of publishing in the eighteenth century can be divided into two main areas: romantic and industrial publishers. The former included a series of publishers that until approximately 1850 experienced the transition from the Old to the New Regime. They knew some of the major new technical innovations in publishing provided by the Industrial Revolution, but due to lack of funding, courage or initiative they applied them only timidly. (…) The latter were a series of entrepreneurs who, as part of the major transformations produced by the Industrial Revolution in the graphic arts, conceived publishing as just another industry. A large initial investment and a vast consumer market were needed in order to make the investments profitable. Therefore, in general the large-scale book industry in Catalonia began to work specially for the Spanish speaking public in Spain and Latin America. This was the time (the last third the 19th century) when Barcelona became the leader in Spanish publishing, a privileged place that it still occupies today. (…)
Despite the two dictatorships (that of Franco being particularly long and devastating), publishing in Barcelona in the 20th century showed a series of aspects that are worthy of comment. Examples of these are the survival of a series of firms, including some that were set up in the previous century (Espasa, Salvat, Montaner and Simón, and the López family of Llibreria Espanyola) and some that appeared as of 1900. (...) Also, for the first time in history, a Catalan publishing firm, Planeta of Barcelona, became a multinational. (...)

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Janés, Caralt, Vergés and Barral, four major names
by Xavier Moret
Journalist and writer

Present-day Catalan publishers owe much to the work done during the Franco regime by a few publishers who were able to avoid the censorship and managed to publish a series of books that did not find favour with the totalitarian regime. This was a difficult time for publishing, a time that was essential in order to understand the later development of the sector. From different positions, persons such as Josep Janés, Josep Vergés, Luis de Caralt and Carlos Barral placed their faith in books during the Franco regime and were able to convert them into a standard of culture. (…)

Josep Janés
Josep Janés Olivé was born in Collblanc (Barcelona) in 1913 and soon stood out as a cultural agitator. From his adolescence he moved in Catalanist circles and between 1930 and 1936 (i.e. between the age of 16 and 22) he published two newspapers, was the editor of a third and founded Edicions de la Rosa dels Vents and the magazine Quaderns Literaris. (…)
During the Civil War, Janés worked for the Generalitat on publications for the soldiers at the front, and as the troops of Franco were approaching in January 1939 he went into exile, though it only lasted a few weeks. (…) In the post-war period, Janés took his first steps in publishing in collaboration with a Falangist friend, Félix Ros, which facilitated relations with the regime. However, the collaboration with Ros ended in August 1941. From then on, Janés became an independent publisher under the name José Janés Editor, whereas Ros founded the Tartessos publishing firm, which he sold in 1944 to José Manuel Lara for 100,000 pesetas, and which formed the beginnings of the Planeta Group. (…)

Luis de Caralt
Luis de Caralt was another important publisher of the early post-war period. He was a Falangist, an art collector and a councillor of Barcelona City Council; he invented the City of Barcelona Prizes. (…) Caralt began in 1942 by publishing two titles by Spanish authors on the Civil War: Mis amigos eran espías by Luis Antonio de Vega and No éramos así by José María García Rodríguez. After a year, however, he published the collections "Gigante", "Cultura histórica" and "Vida vivida", which included many foreign authors. He was the first publisher of Graham Greene and Georges Simenon in Spain, but also published some philo-fascist books, such as the biography of Hitler and works by Count Ciano and Mussolini. (…)
The bookshop of Luis de Caralt, located at number 1 of La Rambla dels Estudis in Barcelona, was an important cultural point of Barcelona. Here one could find foreign books, and its gazette Panorama literario featured writers such as Josep Maria Castellet, Carlos Pinilla de las Heras, J. M. de Martín and Manuel Sacristán, who would later form a group around the magazine Laye.

Josep Vergés
If Janés and Caralt were essential figures in Spanish publishing in the post-war period for their dedication to foreign novels, Josep Vergés, through Edicions Destino, played a key role in recovering the prestige of Spanish authors. The publishing firm was set up by a group of Catalans who changed to Franco's side in Burgos during the Civil War. (…)
Though the first books of Destino were political, the firm gradually moved towards literature and in 1942 it began to publish the prestigious Áncora y Delfín collection. (…)
Due to the distressing situation of the Spanish novel in the 1940s, the publishers of Destino decided to found a prize to stimulate novelists. They gave it the name Nadal, in memory of the journalist Eugeni Nadal who died on 10 April 1944, and on 5 August of the same year the new prize was announced in the magazine. It must be stated, however, that before the announcement of the Nadal prize, Mariona Rebull, a novel published in Destino by Ignasi Agustí, had already become an unexpected best seller and the first major success of the Spanish novel in the forties. (…)
Destino was a great incentive for Spanish authors. In 1968, the firm created the Josep Pla Prize for prose works written in Catalan. (…) The most important works in Catalan published by Destino were undoubtedly the 45 volumes of the Complete Works of Josep Pla (1897-1981), which Vergés began to publish in 1966. (…)

Carlos Barral
Carlos Barral was an innovative publisher who through his books helped to change the dull atmosphere of the period, opening new paths for the Spanish novel. Through his family publishing firm, Seix Barral, he was able to open the way towards a new type of book, and with Encuentros de Formentor he contacted foreign writers and publishers in order to internationalise the world of publishing. Another of his contributions was to cross the Atlantic with the invention of the famous boom of the Latin American novel. (…)
1954 saw the birth of his great endeavour, the "Biblioteca Breve", a collection that would open the door to a European avant garde literature, under the name of the nouveau roman, and to other literatures. In 1958, the creation of the Biblioteca Breve Prize allowed Seix Barral to publish new Spanish authors. (…) Barral decided to support the socialist realist novel, in which he saw a commitment to the left-wing opposition. (…)
The publication in 1962, in the collection "Biblioteca Breve", of La ciudad y los perros by Mario Vargas Llosa marked a new direction in the publishing policy of Seix Barral. This novel paved the way for the Latin American boom. (…)

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Joan Vinyets, Commissioner of the 2003 "Year of Design" event, says : "Design is business too".
by Catalina Serra

Until very recently, design only came to life in spring. In 2003, it will be granted a whole year. Just like Gaudí. The centenary of the "Foment de les Arts Decoratives" - FAD - (an association promoting the Development of Decorative Arts), is what has prompted this celebratory programme of events in which the City Council of Barcelona, the Catalan "Generalitat" autonomous government and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology are also taking part. There are rumours of a very comfortable budget and of an avalanche of exhibitions, conferences, festivities and debates. The commissioner of the event is Joan Vinyets (Tona, 1965), a designer-cum-anthropologist, a former director of the Elisava School and a expert on the design sector.(...)
· What is the programme of events in that "Year of Design" ?
There are two main axes of reflection around which the programme has been established. One is design versus culture, which analyzes design as a cultural and social phenomenon and which will be developped over the first half of the year. Over the second half, the programme of events will be more concretely centred on the relationship between design and economy, which will imply establishing closer links with enterprises of the sector. There will also be another major element, which is the user's point of view, because we want it to have a highly pedagogical dimension. One of the conclusions of the survey carried out was that people have a distorted image of design which is viewed as creativity for its own sake, as a purposeless search for oddity. We would like to diffuse a message with the aim of modifying that image so that, at the end of this "Year of Design", the idea that design is important because it can help improve people's quality of life might eventually prevail. (…)
. Over the last years, they have been telling us that design is important and that barcelona is a design centre. Will the "year of design" bring anything new ?
Until now, emphasis had been placed mainly on creativity and the usefulness of design. Now we are introducig a new element, which is profit. Design means profit. Profit for the users, because it improves the quality of their life, and profit also for the enterprises, because it is a source of revenues. (...)
· The exhibition planned for 2004 is connected to the future museum of design. Which theme is it centred on ?
The main theme is the bicycle, but there is no definite title yet. The bicycle is the paradigm of a certain way of life in less developed societies as well as in more advanced ones. We'll foster a reflection upon the bicycle viewed as a cultural phenomenon, as a technological reality and as a designed product. The exhibition should also serve to show what the museum of design ought to stand for. I know that people are working in a rigorous and serious manner on a good project. The museum won't be finished in 2004, so we want to organize an exhibition that might serve as a basis for further reflection upon some of the concepts proposed by the Barcelona Forum 2004 and for explaining why the museum is necessary. That is why the exhibition will be held on plaça de las glories, the future location of the museum.(...)