I was very happy to finally properly meet and stay with my amazing Spanish publisher Milrazones / Pepa Montano. Milrazones has a very interesting story as a publishing house, it began life as an illegal publisher with Jesús Ortiz printing anti-Franco flyers on a stolen photocopier!! After Franco, Jesús continued publishing, mainly left-wing political writing and non-fiction. Myself and Jesús share a similar taste in books and it was fascinating to hear stories during Franco’s Spain. Jesús teamed up with Paz and Pedro who run a beautiful children’s bookshop called Libreria Gil, an incredibly active bookstore in Santander, in fact it has just won ‘National Award for Cultural Bookstore 2013’. Amongst many other things Libreria Gil welcomed the Irish president (and a huge hero of mine) Michael D Higgins while he was in Santander.
Paz has a great eye for interesting books and together they brought Jon Klassen and lots of other great authors to Spain through Milrazones. Thank you for the wonderful time in Santander and for bringing my books to Spain. I could not imagine a more inspiring publisher and bookstore. Gracias Jesus, Paz and Pedro!
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