Editorial Espasa

The publishing house Espasa, founded in 1860, has maintained and strengthened its vocation of promoting the cultural development of Spain and Latin America through a broad catalog: reference works and an extensive and selective collection of classics, complemented by the best of contemporary fiction and non-fiction.

Since 1925, Espasa has been responsible for publishing the main works of the Royal Spanish Academy: the Dictionary of the Spanish Language, the Essential Dictionary, the Orthography, and the Grammar, a milestone for the linguistic culture of all Spanish speakers, with a common normative grammar seventy years after the last edition.

Publisher of the Austral collection, pioneering in our language in the pocket book world, Espasa has relaunched the collection on the occasion of its 70th anniversary. The original spirit of Austral as a universal library, including all genres and eras of literature, classical works, and great contemporary authors, has been reinforced. Additionally, the didactic vocation of the collection has been strengthened with reading guides to help students better understand our classics.

With more than six hundred titles in its new phase, Alejo Carpentier, Stephen Hawking, Lorenzo Silva, or Mario Vargas Llosa are some of the names that have joined our historic pocket collection. Espasa is a leader in creating reference works. Its catalog includes the Gran Espasa Universal Encyclopedia, the most complete and updated reference work in Spanish, heir to the legendary and centennial Enciclopedia Espasa, presented in twenty-four volumes, DVD-ROM or CD-ROM, and Internet.

Espasa has recently begun a new phase in which the best Spanish and foreign narratives are featured in a catalog where winners of the Espasa Essay Award, the Primavera Novel Prize, and many other authors continue to enrich our literature.

The Espasa Essay Award celebrated its twenty-five-year journey in 2008. In the last edition, journalist Abel Hernández was awarded for his book Suárez and the King. Fernando Marías won the Primavera Novel Prize with an exciting novel, All the Love and Almost All the Death, and María Tena was the finalist with The Fragility of the Panthers.

Among the non-fiction novelties, we highlight the small stories of great masters: History of Philosophy, by Fernando Savater, A Short History of the World, by Fernando García de Cortázar, with illustrations by Julius, A Short History of Spain by Manuel Fernández Álvarez, whose latest work, Spain. Biography of a Nation, was also published this year, and A Short History of Painting, with texts by José Antonio Marina and illustrations by Antonio Mingote. Why Did the Republic Lose the War?, by Hispanist Stanley Payne, Evolution, by British Richard Dawkins, or Power and Glory, by Henry Kamen, are other titles that now belong to the non-fiction area of Espasa.

In recent years, Espasa has embarked on a major fiction project, where a catalog of Spanish and international narratives is being consolidated with authors such as Fernando Schwartz, Javier Negrete, Tom Rob Smith, Agustín Sánchez Vidal, Pascal Quignard, or John Ajvide Lindqvist. Youth fiction is represented by Mamen Sánchez, Montse de Paz, Fedra Egea, or Care Santos.

The Espasa Classics collection: an adventure that began with a joint edition of the Sonatas of Valle-Inclán has been enriched with the Complete Works of Miguel Hernández, The Prince, by Machiavelli, Orlando Furioso, by Ludovico Ariosto, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley... A selection that will continue to grow in the future with the fascinating and centennial collection of Espasa.