Sometimes, environments outside your bubble allow you to speak more freely than in front of an expert but disapproving audience. Eager to see if I can catch fresh fish, I attend a talk about creative industries organized by BCD at Juno House (an elegant club located in the old flour mill on Aribau street) with the general director of Penguin Random House, Núria Cabutí, and the editor of Edhasa and president of the Catalan Publishers' Guild, Daniel Fernández. The talk begins with a brief but interesting linguistic dispute (and the event ends up being held in Catalan) which links to the fact that "Barcelona is the capital of publishing in Catalan and Spanish". "There is no other industry that, from Catalonia, leads as the publishing sector leads", highlights the event's presenter, the publicist Enric Jové. "Well, it has been difficult for us to get the Ministry of Industry to understand that we are an industry. The book's business volume in Spain is 3,000 million euros. In a very good year, Spanish cinema grosses 80 to 100 million. But they have the Goyas and a brutal propaganda machine —says the president of the Guild—. However, we are an industry that has intellectual prestige. That's why Amazon started selling books".

For the first time in forty years, the Atlántida Prize has been awarded to a teacher. The educator, philosopher, essayist, editor, and contributor to the ARA (Argentine Association of Publishers) Gregorio Luri (Azagra, Navarre, 1955) received the 40th Atlántida Prize, awarded by the Catalan Publishers' Guild. The Night of Publishing was celebrated at the Goya Theatre, in front of the entire publishing profession and with representatives from the Catalan Ministers of Education, Culture, and Language Policy. The director of the ARA, Esther Vera, who spoke about the award winner, described him as "the philosopher-teacher on a crusade against ignorance": "All his work can be understood as the patient gesture of helping us turn our gaze toward the light, even if it is not always comfortable," Vera explained, referring to Luri himself. In dozens of books such as On the art of reading either School is not an amusement parkLuri has defended "an idea so classic it's almost countercultural: that knowledge matters, that effort has meaning, and that not everything is relative," Vera recalled.

Moderate satisfaction, in the words of Patrici Tixis, president of the Catalan Publishers' Guild. "The publishing sector continues to post record figures. We are growing at around 3-4%," he said at a press conference at the Ateneu Barcelonès. The 2025 percentage is lower than the 10-12% of 2024, but maintains the upward trend of the 2019-2025 period, during which the publishing sector grew by 29%, according to data from the Publishers' Guild. "Spain and Portugal represent the Iberian exception in a European context where growth has stagnated," Tixis asserted. The press conference also served to announce the winners of the 40th edition of the Night of Publishing, which will be held this Monday at the Goya Theatre in Barcelona: the Atlántida Award goes to the teacher, pedagogue, philosopher, and essayist Gregorio Luri; and the Fernando Lara Memorial Prize, for Arpa Editores.