José Manuel Lara, el editor

For the first time, the authoritative and hitherto unpublished biography of José Manuel Lara Hernández, founder of Planeta and the authentic colossus of the book, written by his friend and adviser for 30 years, the writer and historian Rafael Abella, who probably gave knew better than anyone. These pages include the long and intense conversations that they had in the publishing house itself and in which they expressed their impressions of events experienced, their views on the authors and the vicissitudes of the Premio Planeta since its creation. We will learn how the publishing expansion took place, its consolidation as the first publishing company in the Spanish language and we will witness the incorporation of authors such as Miguel Delibes, Juan Marsé, Camilo José Cela, Jorge Semprún, Terenci Moix or Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, who followed the great work of the pioneers José María Gironella or Ana María Matute, in the task of raising it. Intelligent, intuitive, insightful about the human condition, endowed with the necessary audacity in great businessmen and with the ability to value loyalty, it is impossible to understand contemporary literature in Spanish, and even less its publishing sector, without glossing and recognizing the task carried out by José Manuel Lara Hernández at the head of Grupo Planeta. When asked by Rafael Abella about how he would like to be remembered after his death, he replied: "As the publisher who did the most for Spanish authors". He can rest in peace, well he got it. Serve this biography as a true testimony of a true work of giants.