Domesticar la esquizofrenia de las vanguardias desde un páramo cultural: los inicios de la editorial Tusquets y la encrucijada cultural europea

Abstract

The interest in academic studies about the Hispanic publishing world has emerged relatively recently. The existing studies are limited almost entirely to the national framework, with its particular limitations, which influence mainly the perspective of translations. Comparative studies of publishing houses from different countries with similar identities and projects can contribute significantly to the study of certain cultural debates. In Spain a handful of publishing houses of the vanguard, in particular Catalan ones, played a fundamental role in the cultural transition that took place during the last years of Francoist regime. During its first years of operation—at a time when the country itself was still an isolated, cultural wasteland—Tusquets opted for a particularly subversive and avant-garde approach. Tusquet’s work in opening up the culture was significant, and it is therefore important to evaluate whether the publishing house’s catalogue was based on definite editorial strategies and to what extent Tusquets encouraged the radical ideological manifestations that flourished amongst the students at the beginning of the 1970s. In the first years of its operations, the publishing house’s intention was to mimic trends and currents that emerged in France and Italy signaled out Tusquet’s similarities with publishing houses such as Minuit, Pauvert or Adelphi, which reveal in a representative manner the development of Spanish culture in those years, both because of their vitality and their tendency to improvisation.