Beatriz was an exceptional woman. I can’t stop thinking about it now that she has left us, and meanwhile I feel the sorrow of her absence growing. But I also consider myself very fortunate, like all of us who worked alongside her, because with her we learned almost everything about the book trade, and we had the privilege of working with a top-level editor.
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Carlota Álvarez Maylín, her biographer, has told it in A Curiosity Without Barriers: that very beautiful young woman, daughter of the Brazilian consul, burst into Barcelona at the end of the 1950s, and quickly became the personification of joy for a group of photographers, writers, architects, budding filmmakers, who formed the Gauche Divine. The photos taken of her are very eloquent, from the rapture, by Xavier Miserachs and Colita, among others, some paintings by Óscar Tusquets, but above all the many anecdotes from those who knew her, who remember her arguing and defending some books, but also dancing and laughing heartily, in Cadaqués or in the Bocaccio bar in Barcelona, perhaps the most modern and advanced places at the end of Francoism. That young woman who spoke several languages, who had friends all over Europe, in the anti-Franco movement and in the best European publishing houses of the time, and who went from the festive side to literally working like a mule, is the one who founded Tusquets publishing house in the dining room of her home, as Cristina Fernández Cubas recalled.
That mix of a fun and festive woman, and at the same time demanding and disciplined, is the one we who are part of Tusquets Editores knew. Her charm and stubbornness explain why that tiny and exquisite fledgling publishing house, where Groucho Marx, Beckett, Freud, and García Márquez (Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor) appeared but also authors like Enrique Vila-Matas, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Sergio Pitol, and Mario Vargas Llosa, was also immediately such a relevant and legendary label.
When she launched La Sonrisa Vertical with Luis García Berlanga, that collection that took away the mustiness during the Transition, and bet on a narrative collection, the publishing house then began to play in the big league of international literature. Duras, Irving, Kundera, and later Murakami, Mankell, but also a whole generation of new Spanish-language authors who have become benchmarks, such as Almudena Grandes, Luis Landero, Fernando Aramburu, Leonardo Padura, Gonzalo Celorio (recent Cervantes Prize winner), Rafael Reig, Antonio Orejudo… and Semprún and so many poets and so many wise men like Antoni Marí and Jorge Wagensberg, give a measure of her great talent and insight.
She fought and was tough, and harsh, in a world less kind to women executives, but she was lucky to find someone providential who was Antonio López Lamadrid, a true gentleman from Barcelona, who took charge of the company’s finances and seduced the part of the catalog that perhaps she could no longer attend to. Together they established an irresistible publishing house that was very much a reference among European colleagues.
When, already a widow, she decided to step aside and handed me the reins, she once again showed her generosity and lucidity: with Cartesian determination she organized her archive, with a very rich correspondence, gave it to the National Library, and then maintained a creative scholarship in memory of Toni López. She told me that I had all the freedom and all her trust. I have always been grateful for that.
I knew of her doubts and anxieties during the transition of the company, but she was always an example of how to defend with tooth and nail her autonomy, the value of her catalog, the long-term commitment and rigor, but also the freedom of judgment, to maintain it.
She who did not want family, nor children, nor Christmas, lived these last years at home, immersed in her world, with little memory, but lovingly cared for by some adorable Brazilian caregivers who, along with María José, were her last adoptive family. On the last visit, they told me they gave her coconut water, and when they asked if she would want some the next day, she happily nodded and added: with whisky. I want to remember her laughing out loud, passionate about some new discovery, sitting on the floor, celebrating the conversation with her friends… But messages keep coming from Italian, English, French editors, and emotional messages from so many authors and friends reminding me that we have truly lost someone exceptional.
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