Not even Don Quixote himself, the sanest madman in the history of literature, could have dreamed of such frenzied publishing activity. If an imaginary bookseller, hidden among bundles of paper and ink, had provided Don Quixote with the thousands of books Spanish publishers supply to readers (and to journalists and critics – right now I cannot move for the dozens of packages sitting on my desk and the shelves in my office), the entire world would have been flooded with chivalry books. Spain is not exactly at the top of Europe's book-reading nations . . . but it is certainly one of the biggest book-producing countries.
This country continues to be "fraternally" divided between advocates of seeking the mortal remains of one of its greatest literary figures – García Lorca, who was assassinated by fascist gunmen in 1936 – and advocates of putting it behind us (among them, the poet's own family).
Meanwhile, the publishing engine continues its unstoppable course. Long ago, a few large publishing companies, such as Santillana, Planeta and Mondadori, took control of the lion's share of the market. However, despite the steamrolling presence of these companies, not only do small publishers survive but new ones keep popping up and – even in this recession-ridden 2011 – it is these small players who manage to keep alive the embers of independence and surprise: Periférica, Libros del Asteroide, Páginas de Espuma, Minúscula and Nórdica, to name but a few distinguished examples.
Talking of new arrivals, one has to mention Juan Marsé's new book Caligrafía de los sueños (Lumen), an introspective inquiry into the Barcelona of the post-war period. Marsé is a master of the art of covering the same territory a thousand times and always making it seem new. The author of unforgettable portraits of a Spain facing a very uncertain future, such as Ronda del Guinardó, Si te dicen que caí and Rabos de lagartija, returns to familiar material: everything is sad in Marsé, a sadness that also includes meanness, humour and, of course, memory. His legions of followers are delighted as always.
But in Spain, right now, the most awaited book of the year is undoubtedly Javier Marías's new novel, Los enamoramientos (Alfaguara). The eternal Spanish Nobel prize candidate and the author of what have already become contemporary classics, such as Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me and A Heart So White, has handed over to the printers a spine-chilling story about the highs and lows of our miserable lives. Marías is always Marías, and his arrival in the bookshops is always the publishing event of the season.
The same applies, of course, to the most Peruvian of Spanish writers (or is it the other way around?), a gentleman from Arequipa with his home in the most quintessentially Madrileño Madrid, the man who had been forever on the cards for the Nobel prize until he finally won last year. Mario Vargas Llosa continues to hold a place of honour in bookshops across the country, thanks not only to his latest book, El sueño del celta – about Roger Casement, one of the first Europeans to report the colonial savagery in Belgian Congo and in the Amazon – but also to the publication of his full works, which the publisher Alfaguara started working on as soon as it was known that the Nobel prize had gone to the author of The Feast of the Goat.
Looking a little further back, Anatomía de un instante (Mondadori) by Javier Cercas is one of those essay/fiction books that is so linked to a real – and brutal – event that it not only managed to hypnotise Spanish readers at the time of its well-publicised launch many months ago, but still manages to do so now. The recent commemorations of the 30th anniversary of the attempted coup d'état by a group of military officers, on 23 February 1981 (the real pretext for this work of literary pseudo-fiction), has helped to maintain interest in Cercas's book. He is undoubtedly one of the most interesting authors on the young literary scene in Spain, besides being an especially lucid and sharp columnist. The Spanish continue to live with the 23-F, as it is known. It is a ghost that has never entirely disappeared, a collective memory which Cercas manages to translate masterfully on to the pages of a book that has become a bestseller. Everyone remembers, we all remember, where we were and what we were doing when the pro-Franco soldiers barged into the parliament, shooting into the air. There is also an insistent rumour that Anatomía de un instante will become a film. If this is true, the Spanish, always so happy to remember the darkest parts of their history, will flock to the cinemas.
The darkest part of history . . . or of the present, like the town-planning corruption along the Spanish coastline and more specifically on the east coast (Valencia and Alicante). This mafia world with a dash of Spanish picaresque served as inspiration for Rafael Chirbes, one of the most remarkable authors on the Spanish scene, in his book Crematorio (Anagrama), which has also returned to the limelight thanks to a new TV series on Canal Plus.
Roberto Bolaño, one of the most popular authors in Spain, although he was Chilean, is another strong presence just now, thanks to Anagrama having rescued his book La literatura nazi en América. All this makes up the spectrum of what is happening in literary Spain – a strange country where ebooks have recently become the new fixation of cultural pirates. We have long been European leaders in film and record piracy. All that remains now is to gain the dubious honour of becoming the most efficient ebook pirates. That doesn't seem altogether unlikely, given that the measures undertaken to date by the Ministry of Culture against piracy are a bit of a joke. If Cervantes rose from the dead today he would head straight back to his tomb.
Bestsellers in Spain
1 El tiempo entre costuras (The Time Between Seams) by María Dueñas (novel in which Madrid seamstress is drawn into international espionage)2 Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
3 Dime quién soy (Tell Me Who I Am) by Julia Navarro (novel about the anonymous makers of 20th-century Spanish history)
4 El asedio (The Siege) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (novel set in 1811 Cadiz)
5 Think of a Number by John Verdon (thriller)
Total 2010 book sales 236m
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/28/new-europe-spain-reading-publishing
Bonus: http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/