50 years of Huerga & Fierro: “There are others who edit with a bow tie: our bet has been on heterodoxy” | Culture | EUROtoday

Antonio Huerga (Cartagena, 69 years previous) was “a hairy hippie, he talked a lot, a snake charmer,” as Charo Fierro (Audanzas del Valle, León, 65 years previous) remembers him. It was 50 years in the past, when she met him and so they based a publishing home, across the time Franco died. Huerga, sitting subsequent to him, continues to speak so much and attraction snakes, now sporting his hair quick, though nonetheless in a method new wave Quite cool: “Then there was an explosion of creativity and ideologies,” he says. In that countercultural and anarchist breeding floor they started as Ediciones Libertarias; Since the nineties they’ve been Huerga & Fierro Editores.

—Are you anarchists?

—You cannot say that one is an anarchist!—they reply in refrain, as if it had been one thing they’d identified 1000’s of occasions.—You are or you aren’t, and in any case, others must let you know that.

The connection between the 2 arises from a city in León, Audanzas del Valle, the city of Fierro and Huerga’s father, who went to Charo’s household’s home to provide books to his brothers. “Some authors that we admire like Julio Llamazares, Antonio Colinas or Juan Carlos Mestre know the bucolic León, but we are people of the moor, of the most arid land,” says Fierro with a sure pleasure. But their assembly within the flesh occurred in Madrid, between the college and that Rastro of the time that has turn into a mythological place. “Then they allowed books to be offered on the bottom, combative books, because the mantle high with different merchandise,” says Huerga. Pamphlets and fanzines (at least that’s what they would be called later) like those distributed by artists like Ceesepe, El Hortelano or Agus. “Or the Moebius Band!” adds Fierro, referring to the small publishing house underground of the time. Then, like everyone else, they went to have a drink at the La Bobia brewery.

La Movida: we do not agree on whether it was something transgressive or a celebration of the neoliberal hedonism of good children. “The Movida turned out well for me, even though so many have disowned it,” says Huerga. “Now there is a majority of youth who are not involved in anything,” adds Fierro. They say with true horror that they have received scholarships who do not know Federico García Lorca.

Huerga and Fierro have been editing for five decades, and not only editing, but maintaining a life project together in which they have raised five children. One of them, Óscar Antonio, works at the publishing house, another, Antonio Benicio, has his own: Los Libros del Mississippi. They belong, by the way, to the same generation as other projects that are now celebrating half a century, such as the poetry publishing house Hiperión or the Rafael Alberti bookstore. They receive at their headquarters, where the copies are piled up and have space for events, near the Embajadores roundabout, Madrid. There they tell their story in two voices that interrupt, contradict or complement each other, depending on the case. They continue fighting as a small independent publishing house born before there was so much talk about independence, which gives to everything, but with special affection to poetry. “We are orchestra editors, we know how to work in all positions,” says Fierro.

The anecdotes pile up. They visited the pool where Paco Umbral threw the books that he disliked, in his country house from Majadahonda. They attended Agustín García Calvo’s gatherings, even before they were held at the Ateneo, when they were in cafes like La Aurora or La Manuela. They witnessed, on the day he died, the inert body of Juan Benet. Leopoldo María Panero stopped by his office when he was on Gran Vía, sharing a flat with British Airways. All of them published in their editorial. Panero, in fact, left them a posthumous collection of poems, The lie is a flowerbefore dying in 2020.

Fernando Savater was also crucial, with up to five books, when he navigated the libertarian waters. “Now we do not agree ideologically with Savater, but he is still a friend: he was one of our great supporters,” they say. Those were different times: “Many times there was no need for a contract, we made a verbal agreement,” they remember. That was, of course, another Madrid. “There were no social networks, but we communicated like hell,” says Huerga, “before 200 people came to things, by word of mouth, now we don’t even get 10 together.”

The first books (extra like pamphlets) from Ediciones Libertarias had been The State and its creaturesby Savater, and Communities of Castile and May 68which established parallels between them, and which was a college work by Huerga (and which he signed as AJHM). He offered them in celebration areas equivalent to Malasaña, Libertad or Huertas, for live shows, schools and faculties. Then they cite as milestones, for instance, the Nueva Narrativa Española assortment: they started by launching 12 titles concurrently, by authors equivalent to Leopoldo Alas, Eduardo Haro Ivars, Lorenzo Silva or José Tono Martínez, with design by Alberto Corazón. Some of its authors later went on to profitable careers at bigger publishers. “We don’t mind being a springboard publisher, we are not going to compete with the big groups,” they are saying.

In poetry they printed the journal Signswhich Alas directed, and which later turned his poetry assortment, José Ángel Valente, Francisco Brines, Chantal Maillard, Javier Lostalé, Isla Correyero, Fernando Arrabal, Jorge Riechmann and Joan Brossa handed via that and different collections (they printed the primary ones exterior of Catalonia). The photographer Ouka Leele, additionally linked to the Movida, had her personal assortment: Ouka Leele’s books. And they boast of audacity, for instance, of the ebook Cocainefrom 1988, on the right use of the drug, or the purple college ebookby Søren Hansen and Jesper Jensen, which inspired kids to problem social norms from a Marxist strategy: it taught them use medication, have intercourse, or manage protests. The Nuestra Cultura imprint version was hijacked after which edited by a number of publishers in response, together with Ediciones Libertarias. His finest vendor It’s curious: The seven pillars of knowledge by TE Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia).

In 1995, the editors appeared for a capital companion to assist enhance the formal elements of the mission. The companion joined, however in only one 12 months (from May 5 to May 5) the partnership broke up: the editors judged that they’d misplaced management over the editorial line. So they adopted the identical path, however on a unique path: the mission was renamed Huerga & Fierro, making the most of the fortune that their two surnames sound superb collectively. “Financially, it was traumatic but the things as publishers were already in place,” says Fierro. “I do not agree with the word trauma“We already had the project in mind,” Huerga adds.

“Our big bet has been heterodoxy,” Huerga continues. “There are others who publish with a bow tie, it is better for us if they present us with a good text. If a text does not find a place in any other publisher, it is possible that it will find it with us. That is why they have never considered us serious.” They proceed with initiatives: redesigning the poetry assortment with Juan Carlos Mestre or modifying Cesar Vallejo and Mary Shelley. 50 years later, {of professional} and private life, do they depart a mark? “It is undeniable that wear occurs,” says Fierro. “But,” provides Huerga, “we are more excited than the first day and we never get discouraged, that’s our secret. The best is yet to come!”