Among the publishing capitals of the world, Barcelona stands out as a home to books and authors in two languages: Catalan and Spanish. And with Barcelona selected as the guest of honor at this year’s Guadalajara International Book Fair, the Catalan publishing sector will be front and center at the largest book fair in the Spanish-speaking world.
This year, dozens of Catalan authors—including children’s author Rocio Bonilla and Bel Olid, former president of the Association of Catalan Language Writers—will descend on Guadalajara as part of the Barcelona delegation. Joining them are a number of Hispanophone writers, such as novelist Javier Cercas and literary journalist Álvaro Colomer, as well as Irish author Colm Tóibín, whose 1990 ode to the city, Homage to Barcelona, was recently reissued by Picador in the U.K.
“The Catalan market is stable, strong, and has a long tradition,” says María Lynch, director of Barcelona-based literary agency Casanovas and Lynch, which represents the rising stars Jordi Nopca and Anna Pazos, as well as the estates of such literary titans as Llorenç Villalonga and Mercè Rodoreda, whose 1958 short story “Happiness” is the source of the Barcelona contingent’s motto at this year’s fair: “The flowers will come.”
In recent years, Lynch notes, there’s been a resurgence of interest in Catalan-language books both locally and abroad. According to the Catalan Booksellers Association, sales of general interest books in Catalan represent 30% of the overall market in Spain, which meant a whopping €1.2 billion in sales in 2024. This in spite of the fact that the population of Catalonia—an autonomous region in northeast Spain of which Barcelona is the capital, and where the language is primarily spoken—makes up just 15% of the country’s nearly 50 million inhabitants. “In some cases,” Lynch says, “a Catalan translation of a foreign author’s book can outsell a Spanish edition.”
As a result, investing in Catalan has been a growth strategy for Planeta and Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial (PRHGE), the two largest publishers in Spain, both of which are headquartered in Barcelona. For the past few years, the companies have been competing to acquire Catalan imprints. In July, Planeta purchased Periscopi, a leading independent. Periscopi will join Grup 62, the Planeta division responsible for Catalan-language publishing, which oversees 16 imprints. Taken together, Grup 62 accounts for a third of the Catalan book sales in Spain.
“There are three indicators of the recent success of Catalan publishing,” says Grup 62 editorial director Emili Rosales. “The significant percentage of titles translated from other languages, the growing number of works written in Catalan that are translated into other languages, and the vibrant community of publishers we have in Barcelona that consistently release excellent and socially relevant books.”
Newfound Recognition
For its part, PRHGE acquired independent publisher La Campana in 2019, and two years later bought La Magrana, the Catalan-language imprint of the RBA Group, a Spanish publishing company. In announcing both acquisitions, PRHGE CEO Núria Cabutí cited the company’s strategic efforts to expand and reinforce its presence in the Catalan-language market.
That strategy soon began to pay off. In 2022, the PRHGE-owned La Campana published Les calces al sol, the hit debut novel by Regina Rodríguez Sirvent, another Catalan author making the trip to Guadalajara this year to represent Barcelona. The book, which follows a Barcelona woman who travels to Atlanta to work as an au pair, has sold more than 100,000 copies in Catalan and 20,000 in Spanish, according to MB Literary, which represents Rodríguez. Translation rights have been sold in six territories so far, including in the U.S. to Alexandra Torrealba at Amazon Crossing, which will publish the novel in January 2026 as Singing to the Sun, translated by Beth Fowler.
That the publishing arm of the retail behemoth is commissioning translations of Catalan fiction—one of Grup 62’s bestselling authors, Xavier Bosch, is published by Amazon Crossing as well—would likely come as a surprise to the founders of publishers such as La Campana and La Magrana, who faced significant obstacles throughout their history. Under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who ruled from 1939 to 1975 and declared Spanish as the official language of Spain, Catalan was suppressed by the government, says Laura Vilardell, professor at Northern Illinois University and author of Books Against Tyranny: Catalan Publishers Under Franco. Many Catalan presses were started by “young people who wanted to defend their language and culture within a regime they thought was not favorable to them,” she adds, mentioning in particular La Magrana, which was founded in 1975.
Making Connections
One key advocate for Catalan publishers of all sizes is the Barcelona-based Institut Ramon Llull, a government-funded organization that promotes the Catalan language and culture abroad, offering grants to international publishers throughout the year. These grants are awarded to cover translators’ fees and promotional costs, in an effort to broaden the audience for Catalan authors.
Ramon Llull, named for the 13th-century philosopher whose writings gave credibility to the language, also plays an important role in connecting American publishers with Catalan talent. In 2018, Graywolf editorial director Ethan Nosowsky attended the Institut Ramon Llull fellowship, which hosts international editors for a week every September in Barcelona. There, he discovered the work of Irene Solà and soon after acquired her novel When I Sing, Mountains Dance, translated by Mara Faye Lethem.
The book, which won Barcelona-based publisher Editorial Anagrama’s annual prize for an unpublished Catalan-language novel in 2019, has enjoyed tremendous success in Spain, selling nearly 100,000 copies in Catalan and 65,000 in Spanish, according to Casanovas and Lynch, which represents Solà. The Anagrama award, launched in 2016, has minted multiple literary stars, including Pol Guasch, whose debut novel won in 2021 and last year was published in the U.S. by FSG, also translated by Lethem.
Back in the U.S., When I Sing, Mountains Dance went on to become a finalist for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award. This year, Graywolf published another novel from Solà, I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness (named a finalist for this year’s indie bookseller–helmed Cercador Prize), with plans for a third, her debut The Dams, first published by L’Altra in 2018. Graywolf editor Anni Liu, who is working on Solà’s books while Nosowsky is on sabbatical this year, says the Ramon Llull team has been “terrific to collaborate with.”
Anagrama, the publisher that launched Solà’s career, only began its Catalan publishing program in 2014, despite being founded in 1969. Editor Isabel Obiols, who spearheads the program and oversees Anagrama’s nonfiction in Spanish and Catalan, says that in the past decade she’s noticed more visibility for the publisher’s Catalan authors, thanks to the collective work of booksellers, agents, awards, residencies, and cultural institutions. Obiols adds, with pride, “Catalan literature is an increasingly solid player on the international scene.”
Jeremy Wang-Iverson is a literary publicist living in Barcelona.
