Josep Cabestani Publishers

Josep Cabestany's publishing house gave Julian Carax's novels a Spanish-language route into print, but their commercial failure turned the firm's role into something more complicated than ordinary publishing. Its editions were sustained by hidden financing, the stock became the object of a suspicious buyout attempt, and a fire destroyed the warehouse where the books were stored; years later, salvaged proofs made a new edition possible.

Publishing Carax

Cabestany discovered Carax in Paris in 1927 and acquired exclusive rights to publish his work in Spain and Latin America for a very small sum. The arrangement included Carax translating his French originals into Spanish himself. Cabestany hoped to sell about three thousand copies of each novel, but the books performed poorly. Between 1928 and 1936, the firm published eight of them.

The publishing house's catalogue was not confined to Carax. It made its money chiefly from catechisms and inexpensive sentimental novels about a provincial heroine, Violeta LaFleur, which sold extremely well. That contrast—between dependable popular sales and Carax's unsuccessful books—helps explain why the novels' continued appearance cannot be understood simply as a commercial decision.

Hidden Financing

An employee examining printers' bills discovered that Miquel Moliner, whose name was unfamiliar to the firm, had paid the full cost of Carax's editions. The invoices also showed that printing and distribution cost substantially less than the amount charged to Moliner. The books were therefore profitable to the publishing house even as they went directly to a warehouse rather than reaching ordinary readers.

The employee did not confront Cabestany about the irregular accounts, fearing the loss of his job. Instead, he copied the address used for Moliner's invoices: a mansion on Calle Puertaferrissa. The concealed arrangement reveals how Carax's books could remain in production despite their weak sales, while leaving the firm's actual financial motives uncertain.

The Stock and the Fire

After Cabestany took over the firm, a visitor offered three times the market value for all the remaining Carax novels. Cabestany sought more than the visitor was offering, and the prospective buyer withdrew. A few days later, shortly after midnight, the warehouse in Pueblo Nuevo burned to its foundations, destroying the stock held there. The account links the failed negotiation and the fire in close succession but does not establish who caused the blaze.

The earlier explanation for Cabestany's interest in publishing Carax is similarly tentative. One observer speculates that the publisher may have indulged a private inclination, or simply enjoyed contradicting conventional expectations; the evidence does not settle the question. The firm's history thus holds together a visible business, an undisclosed subsidy, and a destruction whose agency remains unresolved.

Manuscript and Afterlife

Carax's last novel reached the publishing house toward the end of 1935. The employee handed it to the printer without reading it, while Moliner's savings had already financed the edition in advance. Cabestany, then experiencing health problems, paid little attention to the matter. The episode shows the arrangement continuing at a moment when Moliner's resources and health were under strain.

The warehouse fire did not erase every trace of the firm's editions. Years later, proofs recovered from a furniture warehouse belonging to the Cabestany family supplied the basis for a three-novel volume. Gustavo Barceló's new publishing company issued it as the first volume of a Carax re-release; it sold 342 copies, far fewer than that year's bestseller. The publishing house's legacy is therefore divided between the books it printed, the stock it lost, and the proofs that allowed Carax's work to return to print.