Sunday, July 11, 2010


Just a few days ago I arrived home to find a package that had been mailed from Barcelona. Since I know nobody in that city I was intrigued. I opened it to find a book that featured a scanned image of a contact sheet of pictures I had taken years ago of Robertson Davies. The book was being sent by the Barcelona publisher Editorial Empúries. The novel is a translation into Catalán by Carlos Miró and Ferran Ràfols. It is the first translation of Robertson Davies into Catalán.

The publisher arm of the imprint Empúries is Grup 62 and the art director contacted me some many months ago. They had found the pictures in thisblog. The art director did not understand what a contact sheet was. There is no reason why a young designer used to digital would know about film contacts. She wanted to use my “kaleidoscope” images of Davies. We arrived at a nice tidy sum in Euros. I sent the digital file and the cheque did not arrive.

By strange coincidence I was contacted by Carlos Enrique Folch Bruguera from Madrid. He had Googled some of his relatives called Formen and located my blog. I, too am related to them through my Filipino/Basque grandfather Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena. We exchanged emails and I sent him the emails of Forment relatives in Mexico and in the US. I told him of my non-payment problem. It was then that I found out that Enrique’s native language was Catalan and he called and interceded for me. I was paid!

It was so exciting to see my cover and to realize that even though I am Argentine-born here is an example and proof of my Canadian side. I was not born here. But somehow having this cover of a Canadian icon and one more in the fall (a pocket book cover of a biography of Pierre Berton) is most satisfying.