2024-10-15 19:42:00
In gray post-war Barcelona and with an initial capital of 100,000 pesetas, José Manuel Lara and his wife María Teresa Bosch founded the Planeta publishing house. They gave him that name because Lara, an Andalusian born in El Pedroso, Seville, who arrived in Barcelona as captain of the Legion during the war, did not think about “nothing bigger”. I wasn’t wrong.
75 years later, the Reyes they presided this Tuesday at the MNAC and for the third time the delivery of the Planet Award. The last time we saw each other Philip and Letizia At the party of the publisher who today leads the Spanish publishing market, it was 2021, in times of masks and hydroalcoholic gel, when it was revealed who was behind the pseudonym Carmen Molà. The first was in 2016, on the occasion of the group’s 65th anniversary.
Earth’s night is usually a good thing extraliterary thermometer and this edition served to confirm the return to what political reporters usually call “institutional normality”with the presence of president of the government of Catalonia, island of Salvador. The last president present at the awards ceremony was, in fact, Carles Puigdemontbefore changing postcodes a bit abruptly. It was in the 2016 edition, in which it coincided with the Kings, the then vice-president Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, Ana Pastor and Santi Vila. What rained.
The Kings at the Mnac, supported by the political authorities, at the 2024 Planeta Prize. /Manu Mirto
Felipe had words of remembrance for Antonio Skármeta, the Chilean writer who died this Tuesday, winner of the Planeta in 2003. He also praised the path of the group led by Crehueras. “The Planet manages, year after year, to talk about books; that the invitation to reading occupies the place it deserves in our time. This in itself is great news, because as Vargas Llosa said, collecting, in 2010, his Nobel Prize for Literature, “Learning to read is the most important thing that has happened to me in my life”“, he said. “Reading is essential for education free citizens. Reading shapes our imagination, our understanding of the world, our critical spirit,” he added.
The Kings arrived in the Oval Room flanked by Illa (seated at dinner to the right of Felipe), Ministers Jordi Hereu and Ernest Urtasun and the mayor of Barcelona Jaume Collboni. The first to get on the blue carpet were the host, the president of the group, José Crehueras and his wife Columna Martí. Then the writers paraded: the first, the academics Carme Riera and Juan Trejo, and then a long line of ‘ex planetarians’ such as Sonsoles Ónega, Eva Garcia Saenz de Urturi, Cristina Campos (accompanied by her husband Jaume Balagueró) and Manuel Vilas. Also Juan Manuel de Prada, Marta Robles, Vanessa Monfort, Marcos Chicot with Carme Chaparro, Dolores Redondo and César Pérez Gelida; Ángel Martín and Henar Álvarez in tandem, Pilar Eyre, Carmen Mola, María Dueñas, Ayanta Barilli and Nieves Herrero.
Planeta is more than a publishing house, and its media dimension was also noted by the presence of figures such as Julia Otero, Luis del Olmo, Matías Prats and Mónica Carrillo, Gonzo, Mamen Mendizábal and José Yélamo. Not even María del Monte, accompanied by his wife, wanted to miss it.
#Kings #preside #Planetas #big #celebration #75th #anniversary