“There has never been as much reading as now, despite the doomsayers who predicted the end of the paper book,” says Javier Moll, president of Prensa Ibérica.
“Alba is the fruit of our love for books. As Borges said, we are incapable of imagining life without them. The statement is from Arantza Sarasolavice president of Prensa Ibérica and founder of the publishing house 30 years ago with her husband, Javier Moll, president of Prensa Ibérica. The event has all the solemnity that special occasions require and last night’s was: both celebrated at the Café Vienés of the Casa Fuster Hotel the adventurous spirit that led them to start publishing books in post-Olympic Barcelona in 1993, surrounded by all those who make books possible: editors, translators, proofreaders, writers, distributors and readers. To the host of the party, his daughter Idoia Moll, today at the head of the label that most pampers the classics of the 19th and 20th centuries, A few fleeting tears escaped as he thanked his parents for having taught him “the most beautiful job in the world, editing books.”
Joan Tapia (president of the Editorial Committee of El Periódico), Albert Saez (director of El Periódico), Aitor Moll (CEO of Prensa Ibérica), Sergi Guillot (general director of Prensa Ibérica), Ainhoa Moll (Attached to the Editor) and Felix Noguera (general director of Prensa Ibérica in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands) toasted with the entire Alba team, which held almost a plenary session: the editors were there Luis Magrinyà, Manuel Guedán and María Tena (he missed Gonzalo Torne, abroad); also the essential translators of the house such as Joaquín Fernández-Valdés (responsible for the latest version of ‘War and Peace’), Amaya García Gallego (translator with her mother of Gustave Flaubert and now immersed in another Tourmalet of translation, ‘In Search of Lost Time’) and Concha García Cardeñosotranslator of Daphne du Marier.
A large parish from the Barcelona publishing world attended the party: there was the writer Olga Merinothe editors Luis Solano and Aurora Cuito from Asteroid Books, Juan Cerezo from Tusquets, Patrixi Tixis of Grupo Planeta and spokesman for Catalan publishers, the philosopher Jordi Llovet and the writer and critic Anna Caballethe agents Glòria Gutiérrez by Carmen Balcells and Txell Torrent by Mónica Martín, the filmmaker Albert Serra (recently arrived from Liceu), Alex Salmondirector of the literary supplement ‘abril’, and Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, from the Cultures supplement of La Vanguardia. The Madrid delegation formed by Jorge Fauró, Armando Huerta, Jacobo de Arce and Inés Martín Rodrigo He didn’t miss it either.
“There has never been as much reading as now, despite the doomsayers who predicted the end of the paper book,” added Javier Moll, who recalled that two thirds of the 90,000 books published each year in Spain are published on paper. A good part of them, by the way, are printed in Freeduplex, the Prensa Ibérica printing press from which 35 million copies come out every year with fresh ink. For the future of fresh ink, Alba and books, cheers for 30 more.