Against the asymmetry of the post-Francois canon: Feminist publishers and translations in Barcelona

Abstract

The emergence of women’s social and cultural movements in Spain after the death of Francisco Franco led to the appearance of remarkable feminist publication series and publishing houses in a search for foreign ideological mothers. In Barcelona, three such feminist projects were founded in 1977: Colección Feminismo (1977–1979), of Ediciones de Feminismo, La Educación Sentimental (1977–1984), of Anagrama, and the hybrid and multipurpose cultural and political café-bar LaSal, the embryo of LaSal, Edicions de les Dones (1978–1990), the first feminist press in Spain. In this chapter three feminist imprints of the Transition period will be presented. All of them fought to combat the chronic lack of ideological mothers that the Francoist regime had imposed. Aimed at restoring the historical memory of women and creating an identity debate, the importation of foreign feminist literature was crucial for the social transformations of the time. Translation became one of the elements of social change, a political act in trying to achieve canonical equality.