The other day, at a book launch, I attended a conversation between three independent publishers who discussed with concern and helplessness the changes the Catalan publishing market has been undergoing recently. And perhaps global sales figures have indeed grown., but for whom have they grown? One of the editors explained that, in her case, for example, the supposedly glorious day of Sant Jordi sold half as many as last year. Not ten or twenty percent less, no: fifty percent. Another commented that the average sales figures for each title were around 400 copies. A third told me on the phone that their sales this year as a whole are thirty-five percent down. So when we say that Sant Jordi went very well, we should specify who it went well for.

The torrential rain made the presenter's metaphor easy to grasp. The downpours that accompanied the first day of the Círculo de Economía Annual Meeting this Monday afternoon were a clear example of the geopolitical disasters that Catalan companies must navigate at the present time. To answer the question of how they do it, the event brought together the top executives of three globalized companies based in Barcelona—Mango, Fluidra, and Penguin Random House—to understand how they manage their operations at a time when US President Donald Trump can shake up global trade with just a post on his social media.

In medical schools around the world, there is a book that is frequently cited. It is the manualFarreras Rozman: Internal medicine. It has been published continuously since 1929, is periodically updated, and has already accumulated 20 editions. It's not a paperback edition—it has 2,952 pages—and it's not cheap either: it costs 208 euros in paperback and 158 euros in electronic format. It is published by Elsevier, a publishing house that is little known to the general public, but which holds the title of being the one that moves the most money worldwide. In 2023 alone, it had a turnover of 5.654 billion euros, according to the ranking of the 50 largest publishing houses in the world, published by the consulting firm Ruediger Wischenbart. This is 1.1 billion euros more than legendary names like Penguin Random House and up to six times more money than Planeta, which occupies 22nd place worldwide, with a turnover of 959 million euros. Who is behind this group and how has it managed to become the global king of the sector?

"The author opposes this novel being used to train any type of artificial intelligence, whether now or in the future," reads the credits page of May you be (Random House, 2025), the new novel by Belén Gopegui Durán (Madrid, 1963). The warning fits perfectly with one of the main themes of the book: how the surveillance society in which we live – a concept popularized by sociologist Shoshana Zuboff – erodes our rights, whether through the collection of personal data, the bias spread by certain social networks or the algorithms that guide programs.

Mortadelo has found a new job in Cerdanyola del Vallès. From now on, the popular secret agent created by Francisco Ibáñez It will be installed in the new logistics center that Penguin Random House has just opened in Cerdanyola del Vallès, becoming one of the robots that fulfill orders day and night, from Monday to Friday, although these weeks before Sant Jordi it also works Saturdays and Sundays. From this large 42,000 m warehouse², which cost 36 million euros, an average of 135,000 books will be published every day.