“The recent exit of Manel Martos and Clara Sabrià, the last of the editors at RBA, casts doubt on the future of Ricardo Rodrigo’s group.

March 28th, 2016

The fate of RBA, the business group owned by the Argentine Ricardo Rodrigo and Jordi Martí (as a minority partner), the third largest publishing group in Spain after Planeta and Penguin Random House, hangs in the balance. With last week’s confirmation of the exit of the Last of the Mohicans in the conglomerate’s book division, Manel Martos and Clara Sabrià, Schiffrin’s ominous title has become a reality: RBA is effectively a publisher without editors.

The lack of comment from those involved suggests an involuntary, if conceivably negotiated exit and it all points to the end of the greater business strategy that began with Oriol Castanys, the former director-general of RBA books who hired the editors now leaving the publishing house. Hired in turn by Herralde in early 2013 Castanys is currently running Anagrama. His exit was followed by that of Anik Lapointe in 2014 (she is now at Salamandra), the creator of the serious-minded RBA Black catalogue and founder of the eponymous prize. In 2015 the editorial director Joaquim Palau left and today he is making his own way at Arpa Editores. Now it is the turn of the last holdouts: Martos, who spent ten years at the publisher (and was previously at Penísula and Edicions 62), ran Gredos and took on the responsibilities of Lapointe and Palau, and Sabrià (who was formerly at Círculo de Lectores and De Vecchi) who took care of the practical and non-fiction books.

Translation by The Spanish Bookstage 

Read original article here, Matías Nespolo, El Mundo