“There is no one who can stop us!” Barcino Editorial, 1939 – 1960 / Exhibitions / visit us / Start
Date Start: 03/09/2025 Final date: 10/11/2025
Place:
ESAPI ZERO
Hours:
Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Commissariat:
Jaume Clarà, Section of General Collections
Anna Gudayol, Manuscript Section
On April 1, 1944, Joan Coromines congratulated Josep Maria de Casacuberta on the resumption of “our classics”. From exile in Buenos Aires, he exclaimed: “Forward: there are no people who can stop us!” Coromines was very optimistic, because the collection would not publish the first issue, dedicated to the work of Arnau de Vilanova, until almost three years later, in 1947. But in his words he expressed the desire for resistance and cultural continuity of Barcino.
Barcino publishing house was also born in a dictatorial context in 1924, a few months after the coup of General Primo de Rivera. He had done so in a time of expansion of the Catalan edition, with the emergence of initiatives such as the Bernat Metge Foundation and the Editorial Joventut in 1923, or the Llibreria Catalònia in 1924. Casacuberta’s intention was to offer high -culture works for the general public. Within its catalog, the collection “Our Classics”, dedicated to the dissemination of medieval authors in Catalan, will also feature dissemination lines such as the “Popular Barcino Collection”, with a wide theme range, or the “Enciclopèdia Catalunya”.
The Spanish Civil War represents, as in many other areas, a break. Josep Maria de Casacuberta does not go into exile and, from the outset, tries to resume his publishing work, initially with some facsimile in Spanish (Recuerdos y Bellezas de Españaby Pau Piferrer) or clandestine (Lo Gayté del Llobregat) And, since 1947, with the resumption of the collections interrupted by the war.
For this company, Casacuberta will have the participation of numerous collaborators, veterans and novices, Catalans and foreigners, who will contribute with their work to the survival of the Catalan edition for two especially difficult decades. The exhibition of documents, based on the collection given to the Library of Catalonia by the publisher and the Casacuberta family, aims to make visible the relations woven between the Barcelona patrician and the stol of collaborators who participated.
