Hundreds of progressive publishers traveled from all corners of the world to attend the upstart READ Barcelona’s second edition, which ran from September 16-18.

By Olivia Snaije, Contributing Editor

When the international publishing fair READ Barcelona held its inaugural event in 2025, its unanimous success among participants made it clear that it filled a space that many smaller publishers had been looking for, whether in Indonesia, Brazil, or Canada. This year, the number of publishers and magazines attending the three-day event, which ran from September 16-18, nearly doubled compared to the 2025 edition.

More than 450 publishing houses, magazines, and cultural projects from 75 countries came to Barcelona for B2B meetings, and to discuss and develop strategies of resistance and transformation in the face of inequality and the rise of the far right.

The founders, Simón Vásquez, of Verso Libros (Catalonia-Spain), Sebastian Budgen of Verso Books (U.K.), Stella Magliani-Belkacem of La Fabrique éditions (France) and Ole Rauch of Brumaire Verlag (Germany) hope to forge a global network between politically committed publishers, magazines, and beyond, to create and share new ideas.

‘New Ideas’

The professional meetings and round tables took place between the 16th century chapel of the Convent dels Àngels, and Pati Manning, a former 18th-century charity house a few minutes away.

Like last year, panels for the public were held in the early evening with international thinkers such as Perry Anderson, Maurizio Lazzarato, Evelina Johansson Wilén, Betania Núñez, Ilan Pappé, or Adam Hanieh.

There were, of course, Spanish, Basque, and Catalan-language publishers, as well as a large contingent of French literary agents and French and Italian publishers. These varied between La Lenteur which intentionally does not have a website and publishes books about high tech capitalism, to more established publishers such as Gallimard or Le Seuil. There was effequ, a radical publishing house in Tuscany, as well as the 125-year-old Editori Laterza.

There was also a strong presence of publishers from Latin America and Asia. Argentinians such as Salvador Cristófaro of Editorial Fiordo, Raúl Andrés Cuello of Partícula, and Leonora Djament, of Eterna Cadencia Editora, (also a bookshop) combined their visit to Barcelona with a trip to Madrid where they visited their distributors and bookshops, attended Back to the Book Festival for independent publishers and spoke to journalists about their books. Like all publishers in Argentina, they are battling Javier Milei’s right-wing populist and radical libertarian administration intent on dismantling the cultural sector, and now the country’s fixed-price regulation.

In lieu of the Frankfurter Buchmesse, Leonora Djament decided to “do something different this year.” Inspired by the roundtable events and B2B meetings with small indie publishers, she was eager to meet like-minded publishers to discuss shared topics and challenges but also to meet with publishers she hadn’t meet before, such as Pluto Press (U.K.) “I want to participate in everything,” she enthused.

Gustavo Faraon of Dublinense (Brazil) said that although Frankfurt’s invitation program had shaped his career 17 years ago, he too would be skipping the Buchmesse this year.

“I’m always looking for opportunities to meet people off the beaten track and this is an occasion to meet new people. For publishers like me, personal connections are as important as finding a book.”

There was a positive flow going between Brazil and the Basque Country : Faraon was looking forward to meeting Editorial Txalaparta (Basque Country, Spain), while Ane Eslava Serrano, an editor at Txalaparta, and back at READ for her second time, said last year she had enjoyed meeting Brazilian publishers Editora Elefante, and Ubue Editora who were also back this year.

Spaces like READ “are important in this worrying political context,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for small publishers to come up with new ideas and think together.”

Zhou Zhan of Shanghai 99 Readers’ Culture came to Barcelona specifically for READ. He said that in the West, organizations might position themselves as “left-wing” but that he was not in Barcelona for ideology, but to “refresh his mind,” and that he came to exchange ideas. “Publishing has to have strong ideas, and we want to know what ideas we can offer readers in China.”

Zhou said his main purpose was to buy titles, and he found “everything inspiring.” It was particularly refreshing for him, he said, to meet fellow publishers from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

‘To See That Things Can Change’

As part of a group of magazine editors who were invited, Brian Hioe of New Bloom magazine in Taiwan was at READ for the first time. New Bloom was founded by students and activists following the 2014 Sunflower Movement in Taiwan, and offers radical perspectives on Taiwan and the Asia-Pacific. Hioe already knew Korean publisher, Jang Won, of Secondthesis, which publishes books on radical philosophy, eco-socialism, and Palestinian issues. It was Jang’s first time in Europe and READ was very interesting to him but challenging because of the language barrier, he said.

The International Alliance of Independent Publishers, a network of 980 publishers who favor bibliodiversity, had at least ten publishers from their alliance present, including Ronny Agustinus of Marjin Kiri Publisher (Indonesia) and Sulaiman Adebowale of Amalion (Senegal) who also attended the first edition of READ.

Although several of the Alliance’s publishers from the Middle East did not receive visas from the Spanish government, Samar Haddad, of Atlas Publishing (Syria) came, as did the Egyptian publishers Dina Kabil and Yehia Fikri, of El Maraya for Culture and the Arts, winners of the 2026 IPA Voltaire Prize.

The READ team also invited organizers of literary events who participated in a round table for professionals about alternative festivals.

Two Italian festivals, Festival di Letteratura Sociale / Working Class, Firenze RiVista Festival  and the Brazilian FLIPEI shared experiences and challenges and ways in which events like these can collaborate. FLIPEI, which began as a “pirate” alternative to the established FLIP, has since become a powerhouse on the Brazilian literary scene, even if they have trouble “promoting political events in public spaces,” said one of the organizers, Manuela Beloni.

Arun Kundnani, a writer and the new editorial director of Monthly Review Press, which began as a socialist weekly in 1949, arrived from the U.S. He was invited to speak on the public panel Race or Class, which, despite torrential rain, drew 490 people.

Kundnani took advantage of the presence of international publishers to network and talk about upcoming books that he’ll be publishing, including The Ticket Seller, a posthumous autobiographical novel by the late Palestinian writer and thinker Walid Daqqa, published in Arabic by Dar al-Adab, or books by Momodu Taal and Iker Suarez.

Turkish children’s publisher Esra Okutun of Sarigaga Yayincilik came to Barcelona primarily “as an intellectual exercise to hear about new ideas,” she said.  Istanbul’s Kalem Agency sent Zeynep Söylemez, who recently graduated from university.

“To see the political aspect of the event is very interesting,” Söylemez said, adding that it was important “for young people like us to see that things can change.” She was also able to meet with Beatrice Pozzi from Edizioni Nottetempo, which publishes Kalem’s author (and PEN International president) Burhan Sönmez.

Part of the reason READ is able to attract such a wide variety of smaller publishers is that it provides travel grants, accommodation grants, or both, to those in need. This year breakfast and lunch were offered, including a paella one day—not an insignificant gesture for those on a tight budget in an expensive city.

READ receives institutional and private funding, and perhaps a measure of its growing success is that this year it attracted the attention of the Spanish Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun. Just after announcing that he might be the candidate for the progressive left-wing party, Sumar, in the upcoming general elections, the minister visited READ where he met with the organizers.

As the very full three days wrapped up, Verso publisher and READ co-founder Sebastian Budgen said that although this year’s budget had increased substantially, he didn’t want to rest on his laurels. “I’d like to see a wider variety of publishers and more from the Global South and a bigger presence of magazines,” he told Publishing Perspectives.

Looking ahead, Budgen and his co-founders hope to open READ to the entire publishing ecosystem, and to see more independent booksellers, radical librarians, and podcasters included in the program.