Argentines exile in Spain: translation as a practice of solidarity

ALEJANDRINA FALCÓN

Translation & Interpreting

Western Sydney University

Lugar: Syfney; Año: 2024

1836-9324

As part of its solidarity activities with Chilean, Uruguayan and Argentine exiles in Catalonia, the NGO Agermanament led by Father Josep Ribera and the Lliga dels Drets dels Pobles published a register of exiles organized according to professional activity in the magazine Agermanament in 1979. The categories included in the list were "visual artists, doctors/psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists, musicians, actors and singers, publicists, jurists, architects, and photographers." Translators were not included in the list, despite the fact that its professional status had been recognized by UNESCO in 1976 and that thousands of Latin American exiles who fled the Southern Cone dictatorships and arrived in Spain without refugee status, housing or labor permits worked as such. Due to the toll on the publishing realm, a sector heavily damaged by political and cultural repression, numerous Latin American intellectuals and writers that fled into exile entered the Catalan publishing world as translators, proof-readers, and editors. My article aims to shed light on the quantitative and qualitative importance of translation as a practice of solidarity within the publishing world during the Spanish transition to democracy. I want to show that members of the Latin American diaspora contributed to the constitution of a transnational publishing space, which was possible thanks to the solidarity of local publishers and exiles who created a labor network through the commission of translations.