Both are small publishers, but what makes a significant difference from the business point of view is: May has never been able to have anyone pay. “That’s a big difference from me,” says López, but at the same time recognizes that it is immersed in a permanent contradiction: “At the end of the month I collect, I have a salary, but the writers who publish charge a certain amount for each book, and to put it clearly, they cannot live doing literature.”

New forms of writing

Among others, one of the topics discussed around the table has been the quality and evolution of the current Basque literature. Etxezaharreta, without giving concrete examples, stressed that in recent years there has been a predominance in favor of the unified Basque country, especially north of the Bidasoa, and that the dialect is not used as before: “I would say that everyone uses a similar format, as if the youth culture were universal, and I think it has not always been for the good. In the expression, for example, it has been lost.”

López clarifies that it is “complicated” to tell the writer how to write, but it is also consistent with what Etxezaharreta has said about the influence of editors in literary production. In addition, he stresses that simple publications would simplify the Basque literature itself and vice versa.

Question of territoriality

López is often listed in Susa's publications and communicates it as follows: “I write very few writers from the Northern Basque Country, few Alaveses, more Navarros, more Biscayan and most Gipuzkoans.” In this sense, he believes that the literary models are created by those who create and publish the contents and, in short, these writers determine whether the books are structurally complex, and in the case of the dictionary the same.

The issue of territoriality has been approached with pleasure by Etxezaharreta, because it is a matter with concern: “Bidasoa sometimes expands, among us we work little. Our reality is that in the South little is bought of Iparralde's books, because they believe that they will not be able to understand Euskera impregnated with French. And in Iparralde the same, it is considered that this Euskera-Spanish is not understood.”