Excerpt from 'Secondary Character: The Dark Backroom of Publishing' by Enrique Murillo

On the occasion of the release of " Secondary Character: The Dark Backroom of Publishing " and the interview about it in ABC Cultural with its author, editor Enrique Murillo, we're excerpting a few pages for the reader's enjoyment. The book is an anthology of the successes and failures of this industry in Spain, presented through the incisive memoirs of a figure who has known all its intricacies. In this text, the former right-hand man of Jorge Herralde, founder of Anagrama, tells how he wasn't fired.

«I feel obliged to slowly recount the circumstances of my departure from Anagrama. The version conveyed by Jorge Herralde through the account written by Jordi Gracia in 'Los papeles de Herralde' contains a few inaccuracies attributable only to the source who informed Gracia. To begin with, it states that I was not fired. Indirectly, since Herralde states in the account corresponding to that chapter of the book that "there was never any dismissal at Anagrama," a matter that could never have affected me, since I was never on the payroll. And, on the other hand, it did affect one person, who was on the payroll and was fired, as I will mention. As for me, I was always a false freelancer there. What happened in 1989, when I left, was quite the opposite of a dismissal, since I only decided to leave precisely because the publisher refused to give me a contract.

That book says I left the publishing house because Herralde didn't accept my proposal to "expand" my responsibilities. I never made that proposal. Was there really any additional responsibilities beyond those I already performed at the company? According to the version that the company owner evidently told Jordi Gracia, he, Herralde...

He preferred not to do so [to expand the powers of collaborator Enrique Murillo], after several literary disagreements and some personal tension, and Murillo then began a nomadic journey through various journalistic and publishing companies, far from an Anagrama in whose history there has not been, according to Herralde, any dismissal of employees...

To start at the end, Herralde did once fire an employee, Carme López, who before the end of the period in which I collaborated at Anagrama joined the company as head of production (to replace Nuria Claver), and soon after, and seeing her enormous capacity, the employer decided that she should perform certain tasks more closely related to business management.

As for me, either the editor's memory is failing him, or he's deliberately distorting the story. What happened was this. As I mentioned above, I was working flat out and with hours beyond my capabilities, doing a wide variety of jobs for the same company. In the midst of all this, I received an offer from 'El Europeo': ten million pesetas a year to work as editor-in-chief of that monthly magazine. Although it was something no one could have refused, I didn't accept it immediately. And not because I'm an idiot or a Franciscan. For a few days, I considered the possibility of a contract and a fat salary, which included paying into the Social Security system at the highest level, perhaps hoping to collect some kind of retirement pension in the future. But that meant abandoning what I was passionate about: working for a publishing house, moving forward with my crazy idea of ​​changing the history of Spanish fiction as a contributor and translator for Anagrama .

As for that version published in Herralde's name, there was no literary disagreement. How could there have been, if Herralde and I had never spoken about literature, neither before, nor then, nor after? And I'm not saying that the editor never spoke about literary matters; but, if he did, he preferred not to broach the subject with me. Nor was there any personal tension on my part. At the time, I asked for only one condition to stay: a contract. I didn't even mention a salary; I didn't ask, nor did I even insinuate, that he match the offer they had made me. Not at all. Because, I insist, I valued the editorial work I was doing far above money. It didn't matter: Herralde didn't make me any offer; he refused to hire me. Because what I did tell him, without getting angry at all, but rather demanding the rights that I believed were mine, was one thing: that I wanted to continue working at his publishing house, but on the condition that I received a salary and was registered as an Anagrama SA employee with Social Security. Because that meant returning to paying contributions appropriately, something that was urgent at my age of forty-six and after not having paid contributions since 1974.

I gave him time to think it over. And he refused to hire me. Incidentally, his company was no longer, as it had been when he started commissioning my reading reports, a company on the verge of bankruptcy, but a booming, very booming business. In fact, in just a few years (around 1978-1979) he jumped from ruin to ruin to buy, for ten million pesetas, the enormous offices and warehouse that had belonged to the publishing house Crítica, then owned by Grijalbo, according to what the seller, Gonzalo Pontón, told me, who mentioned that figure. Anagrama was swimming in prosperity, perhaps in part thanks to some of the things I had done there.

But the businessman didn't want to waste his money hiring me. And that refusal meant that, if I stayed at Anagrama, I'd never resolve my retirement problem. And this last point was what prompted me to do something I knew would be extremely complicated and painful for Fe, and quite sad for me. Because it meant we'd have to leave Barcelona and, therefore, she'd have to leave the analysis with Ramírez. Leaving Barcelona and leaving publishing, the profession that had captivated me. The fact that, on top of that, Herralde insinuated years later that he hadn't fired me is something that even today stupefies me. How could he fire me if I wasn't an employee? I don't understand his need to speak ill of me, like that of letting slip that I later followed a "nomadic itinerary," a phrase that oozes disdain and ingratitude from someone who seems to feel the need to belittle those who have helped him, a little or a lot, to rise to prominence. Oh my God.