How do you bring the relationship between library and editor roles?

As one after the other, I have learned to take all aspects into account. When I hear each other talking badly -- things aren't black or white. Both bookstores and publishers close, so the reason will be there. In addition, my wife is an illustrator and I know how hard it is for them to work alone. It is about adding forces, not taking them away.

It looks like you're doing fine.

Yes, because we don't have big costs or big infrastructures. Little by little we have been growing and, as we had so bad at first, it has taken us to realize that we were doing better, that we had been without loss for eight years. Well, we don't have a huge salary and we don't have a car, but it wasn't our goal.

Have you become the main reference in the Spanish State?

We arrived with the outbreak of the graphic novel, we saw it coming from the beginning and we left. We have become a reference editorial among Spanish authors, but that does not mean that there are no good authors outside of us. We try to treat authors well, and they appreciate how we work. Recently, in the negotiations with the authors, two have told us that we were asking too little to get our share up.

But it's general. The world of comics works fine.

Yes, in the 1980s there was an explosion, but too infested and without a crown. In recent years, however, growth is taking place on a more solid basis, new readers are being incorporated, the works are increasingly better. Thanks to the graphic novel, the present is the best time of the comic book for the reader. If a few years ago a literature lover or a ruthless filmmaker entered the store in search of an interesting comic book, we had nothing to offer him, the first part of Maus, Paracuellos de Carlos Giménez and another four or five titles. Today, what we read in the novel or in the program is reflected in the graphic novel, even a lot of people who have come there have not gone through the comic book.

The graphic novel has therefore been developed outside the industry.

Yes, there are three large groups of comic book industries that produce the comic as it has been produced in Spain until fifteen years ago: American marvel, Japanese manga and Franco-Belgian. In it, the cartoonist is hard-working, must draw romance, porn or ducks the same, to keep the family. In recent years, however, another model of artistic authorship has been developed, that of literary authors: to tell their own history. It's an international movement, it doesn't guarantee you the profit, but we've joined that since the beginning, and today we're selling the rights of our authors around the world.

They're new themes and perspectives, like Una's gender-based violence between habits.

Drawing by the need to tell a certain story, before it did not exist, to consider comic book as a personal expression. One among many is paradigmatic, a reflection of society. Last year we published the comic costumbrista Gazpacho agridulce, anecdotes of children of Chinese emigrants, narrated by one of them. What I'm most interested in today's comics is nonfiction.

However, the comic still has that picture of Frikism.

Not in the environment where I move, but not in the real world. I thought about the dinner of friends we had gone to college. “When I tell you that I am in Astiberri”… No one knew what Astiberri was, and they are all dressed people. Much progress has been made, today the references to comics appear on the pages of culture, only in the first youth supplements.

Has the improvement also given impetus to publications in Basque?

I find it difficult to talk about editions in Basque, because last year four things emerged. We began to publish in Basque in the second year. It was a disaster and we were scared. Two years ago I saw the Ballenas of Javier Isusi, but we thought it absolutely logical to leave. In addition to the Mitologika collection, each year we draw two in Basque: The house and wrinkles of Paco Roca, María and I of Gallardo and María are 20 years old. We do this with trusted authors, who say and accept that we are going to pay him a misery for a roll of 1,000 units.

What proposal for success in Basque Country do you imagine?

In Euskera and successfully... I find it hard to combine the two words. I would, however, like it to be the original in Basque, to be successful and to be translated into Spanish. On the subject, I would like to see, if there were a serious proposal, a reflection of the time when we were young: Bilbao industrial, remodeling, years of ETA lead, dirty war, drugs... What was our daily normalcy. Everything I've seen has seemed very decaffeinated, perhaps because you're still being asked to position yourself and that creates fear. It may still be a few years, but it will be our generation that will have to count, because we have been the last ones we have lived.