A new generation of Girona publishers are demanding to publish outside of Barcelona.

GironaThis Sant Jordi, in Girona's Plaça Catalunya, there will be a new book stall representing the new generation of Girona publishers. It is formed by Cap de Brot and Gata Maula, two young independent publishing houses founded this year with a similar purpose: to publish good books in Catalan and to do so and promote it from Girona. Nearby, heading towards La Rambla, Laia Regincós will be at the Ela Geminada stall. Despite being only thirty years old, she has been managing the business for six years. de facto This publishing house was founded in 2011, but this will be the first to do so as an owner. groupie She sat in the front row of the presentation of the two publishing houses. "For many years, I felt very alone," she says. Now, far from competing with each other, they are advocating for alliances and helping each other where necessary.

The first step will be this Sant Jordi, when Gata Maula invites Cap de Brot books to its Girona stop, and the same will happen in reverse in Barcelona. The three publishers are already preparing to join forces for the upcoming Catalan Book Week.

Despite being the youngest member of all the new Girona publishing houses, Laia Regincós is by far the one who has been in the sector the longest. At the end of her philosophy degree at the University of Girona, she began an internship at Ediciones de la Ela Geminada, which Oriol Ponsatí-Murlà had founded in 2011 in Girona to publish classic authors in Catalan. However, little did she know that a year later, at the age of 23, she would find herself at the helm of the publishing house because he would become director of the Institute of Catalan Letters. "I don't know if I saw it as an opportunity: it was either I take it or I close it," she reflects.

The first decade was one of inertia and learning, but in 2023, Regincós's project within Ela Geminada finally emerged: the Idil lis collection, which seeks to recover, promote, and normalize erotic literature in Catalan. The latest volume published is Confessions of a sugar baby.

But in 2025 she has taken a step further by becoming the owner of the label and with the push of a new collection of contemporary voices that will be released in September. It will begin with Rotten creatures, by Amy Twigg, which draws us into the context of a women's commons and a cult. "The narrator looks at it from within and with a touch of skepticism. It's a topic that seemed interesting to us and little touched on here," she explains.

Regincós asserts that she has had to "dig a lot of stones" to get here, which is why she has experienced the birth of Cap de Brot and Gata Maula with great joy. "I've done what I would have liked to have been done to me," she notes. Regarding the publishing scene, she claims that she loves Girona and wouldn't leave "even with turpentine." But she also admits that publishing from Girona involves a certain "resistance," due to the ongoing need for a certain generational change and to "occupy" spaces.

In this sense, Ela Geminada values the decentralized work being done by Mar Camps, who has just published her first novel with Editorial Gavarres, at the De Socarel festival in Celrà and Llera del Ter. "Finding our place within culture: it's not about a cultural elite. The pool is small, and that has its pros and cons," she concludes.

At the end of September, the Cap de Brot publishing cooperative launched its debut with the publication of an out-of-print book by Santiago Rusiñol: Clay Birds. It was a statement of intent that sums up the idiosyncrasy of the Llagostera imprint: navigating between mischief and elegance, between seriousness and rapture. This is how Cap de Brot, whose motto is "The publishing house that has no fear," has reissued the stories of Figueres native Carme Guasch. Island situations.

The cooperative is headed by three university classmates who met while studying Catalan philology at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Girona, and at the Writing Classroom of La Merced, Sant Josep, in Llagostera. They all shared a concern about the decline of the Catalan language and the need to demonstrate that there is still plenty of life and a strong market for it. the reissue of the emblematic This is where it all ends by the Valencian Josep Piera, in a corrected and expanded version.

A decade after the birth of independent publishing houses such as L'Otra, Males Herbes, and Periscopi, which according to Bartolomé Cerdà "are saving Catalan narrative," with Cap de Brot they wanted to demonstrate that there's still a long way to go. The publications are carefully crafted, with illustrations by Alba Barceló from Lagos, design by Júlia Planas from La Incorrecta, and printing in English.

With this declaration of intent, Cap de Brot—which far from being an insult refers to the best of its kind—was born with stubbornness and a desire "to occupy a niche" in the Països Catalans as a whole. "Knowing that we can compete, that we have a good product," says Codina. This also applies to Girona, where they lament having a certain "Stockholm syndrome." "We feel it is very much ours, but at the same time acceptance is difficult," says Bartolomé Cerdà. "You fight against acceptance here and against being labeled as a provincial from the city."

This fight is shared through the WhatsApp group they have with Ela Geminada and Gata Maula, called "Pobres editors." It is identified by an image of Captain Haddock from Tintin with a speech bubble that reads: "None from Gata Maula Geminada!" "The publishing world is very small and there's a lot of competition, and the easy way is to join forces," they summarize.

Before the pandemic, Aaron Sánchez Tolosa, then a bookseller at the now-defunct Geli, served as a judge for the Llibreter Award for the first time and encountered a problem: the title he had wanted to defend didn't exist. He mentioned this to his partner, Cristina Sagrera, a bookseller at La 22, and from there the dream of creating their own publishing house together was born. The moment would come in 2022, when Geli finally closed the doors and Sánchez Tolosa realized the need to create his own projects. From that death was born what is now Gata Maula, presented to society on March 1, the year Sagrera turned 40.

"I left La 22 and for the first time I had two years of unemployment, and we took the plunge without even checking if there was any water," she explains ironically. Sánchez Tolosa is now a bookseller at La 22. The aim of his publishing house, for the moment, is to produce good Catalan translations that until now they couldn't find – they are both devourers of English books. They have debuted with The Ballad of the Mountain Birds, a collection of stories by the Chinese writer who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Can Xue, as well as At dusk, by South Korean activist Hwang Sok-yong.

It's from Girona, then, that two prominent Asian writers have entered the Catalan publishing scene. For Gata Maula, this process also has an element of resistance. "In Girona, in the cultural sphere, there was a generational plug that we've barely broken," reflects Sánchez Tolosa. "Writers like Terribas, Fonalleras, and Grau brought a lot of color to Josep Pla's gray Girona. This generation had already achieved success, and now, suddenly, three different projects have taken shape, but there is a point of generational unity."

For Gata Maula, this process also draws on the current moment: they are a generation that can no longer afford to live in the Catalan capital: "We found the doors of Barcelona closed." But, in the meantime, they feel nonconformist in their city. These are the ingredients that have led to the birth of the new generation of Girona editors.