No Way Jose
The most prominent publishing group in Spain is Planeta. Founded in 1949 with Dictator Franco alive and kicking the company has triumphantly survived the relentless book-trade crisis.
The most prominent publishing group in Spain is Planeta. Founded in 1949 with Dictator Franco alive and kicking the company has triumphantly survived the relentless book-trade crisis.
The most prominent publishing group in Spain is Planeta. Founded in 1949 –with Dictator Franco alive and kicking– the company has triumphantly survived the relentless book-trade crisis. Included in the global Top-Ten list among publishing giants such as Pearson, Thomson/Reuters, Random House, McGraw-Hill and Hachette, it leads the market in Spain and South America, holds second place in France and currently distributes to 25 countries where Spanish and/or French is spoken.
Based in Barcelona, where Spain’s publishing industry is concentrated, the family-owned corporation is now in its third generation. The founder of the saga was José Manuel Lara Hernández, a self-made maverick who after failed stints as a carpenter, house painter and skit dancer decided to try his luck in the second-hand book-trade. Eventually he would end up owning several small publishing-houses which he would merge in the decade of the 1950s to form the Planeta Corporation.
At his death in 2003 he was succeeded by his son José Manuel Lara Bosch, an economist who bolstered the company with the acquisition of the powerful French publishing-group Editis. When Catalan nationalism intensified its threats to split from Spain, Mr. Lara Bosch famously proclaimed that if Catalonia became a separate country, the Planeta Group would move to Madrid, Zaragoza or even Cuenca, because he considered it absurd to own a Spanish company in a foreign country with a foreign language. This week the city of Barcelona hosted the 2015 Planeta Prize awarding Alicia Giménez Bartlett with her novel “Naked Men” the world’s most highly endowed literary prize for a single book: 600,000 Euros. At the act the third José Lara –now sharing the group’s control with Mr. José Creuheras after his father’s death in January this year– said it once again: “We’ll leave Catalonia if it leaves Spain”.
