"When I took early retirement, it was the moment to make my dream come true"

BarcelonaFor decades, Antònia Carré-Pons (Terrassa, 1960) combined secondary school teaching with classes at the Open University of Catalonia, the writing of novels such as Jo també vull ser funcionària (Proa, 2010) and the editing of books such as Espill, by Jaume Roig (Quaderns Crema, 2006). "When I took early retirement, it was the moment to make my dream come true, which was to set up a publishing house," she recalls from the Casa Usher bookshop, which hosted the celebration of the fifth anniversary of Cal Carré, the project that started in October 2021 with Dos relats, written by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. "Since then we have published fifty titles –she explains–. I feel great pride in the work done during this time because it connects with my parents and grandparents, who had owned the butcher shop in Terrassa that the publisher pays tribute to in its name. If they had great respect for their customers, Cal Carré has it for the reading public: we never sell them a pig in a poke".

The catalogue that Antònia Carré-Pons's publishing house has achieved in such a short time is exemplary and has advanced in parallel to the author's literary consolidation, who won the latest Òmnium award for best novel of the year thanks to La gran família (Club Editor, 2025). Cal Carré is founded on the translation of classics into the Catalan language. "We believe there is still room for everyone because there are many classics, and in Catalan, we still have a lot of work to do," she comments. The ten new titles that Cal Carré publishes annually coexist with publishers specializing in this field such as Adesiara, Barcino, Cràter, and Viena, through collections such as Club Victòria, Petits Plaers, and El Cercle de Viena. Also with collections like Bernat Metge, both the classic and the universal ones, in addition to publishers that also frequently publish them, such as Edicions de 1984, Lleonard Muntaner, Quaderns Crema, and Proa. Among the "battle horses" of Cal Carré, its editor highlights three. Firstly, the translation of the works of Willa Cather, "a very good North American author who is finally starting to be read here" and of whom the publisher has released five novels. Secondly, the desire to recover Panait Istrati, "an author of Romanian origin mistreated by life and by posterity who wrote a lot and is worth reclaiming." Finally, the construction of a library of Arthurian works in Catalan and other classics of the Middle Ages, one of the weaknesses of Carré-Pons, who specialized in medieval literature.

Cal Carré and the suffering

"We also have a few books that follow the feminist line started with The Book of the City of Ladies, by Christine de Pizan, written at the beginning of the 15th century –she explains–. This part of the catalog includes books such as Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman [1798], by Mary Wollstonecraft, and We Must Welcome Foreign Women [1835], by Flora Tristan". Pizan, Wollstonecraft and Tristan coexist with English authors such as Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen and four illustrious Russians of the 19th century: Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, Anton P. Chekhov and Fyodor M. Dostoevsky. "One of the publisher's best-selling titles is Poor Folk [1846], Dostoevsky's first novel, previously unpublished in Catalan –says Carré-Pons–. We are about to publish another Dostoevsky, The Gambler [1866]". In both cases, the same translator has been in charge, Miquel Cabal Guarro. Antònia Carré-Pons likes to repeat both in terms of authors and in relation to translators. Thus, the Catalan voice of Virginia Woolf is that of Marta Pera; that of Panait Istrati, Anna Casassas; that of Willa Cather, Esther Tallada. "In one of the first emails that Antònia wrote to me, she repeated a motto she likes very much: 'At Cal Carré, no one comes to suffer'," recalls Tallada.

"From the very first book, the Two Stories by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Cal Carré gives a nod to craftsmanship, because that was the first title of Hogarth Press, the Woolfs' publishing house –says Marta Pera–. They bound the books themselves and set the printing type. For the illustrations, they counted on friends or relatives". Antònia Carré-Pons does not go to that extreme, but she has created a family of regular collaborators, among whom is the philologist and medievalist Lola Badia, who for Cal Carré has translated and annotated Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Death of King Arthur and The Story of Tristan and Iseult.

Another repeat offender at the publishing house is Anton M. Espadaler, also a philologist and medievalist, who after The History of the Prince Jacob has published his version of The Fair Unknown, by Renaut de Beaujeu, written around 1200. "I started translating the Merlin by Robert de Boron three weeks ago," Espadaler announces. "He is a very influential character, who centuries later inspired J.R.R. Tolkien's Gandalf and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter. The last two prophecies of Merlin are about Barcelona, and they are not good." When he finishes with the magician, Espadaler plans to take on the Roman de Brut, written in the mid-12th century in Anglo-Norman by the poet Robert Wace. "With this and the novels by Chrétien de Troyes that Lola Badia is translating, we will have a very complete Arthurian library," asserts Espadaler. And it will have been built in less than a decade, in parallel with the publication of gems until now unpublished in Catalan such as Three Years [1895], by Anton P. Chekhov; The Moorland Cottage [1850], by Elizabeth Gaskell, and My Ántonia [1918], by Willa Cather.