The magazine Litoral has announced that it will cease publication after releasing in November an issue titled “Final Anthology” that will coincide with the centenary of its founding in 1926 by Emilio Prados and Manuel Altolaguirre, a publication that published some of the early works by authors from the Generación del 27.
El director de Litoral, Lorenzo Saval, ha afirmado este lunes a Efe que “llega un momento en el que hay que parar”, en su caso después de más de cincuenta años de dedicación a la revista, ya que asumió la dirección en 1975, un periodo en el que “ha habido momentos buenos, momentos malos, mucho prestigio y también mucho olvido. Ha sido una labor inmensa”, ha señalado Saval, que cree que “nada mejor que parar justo a los cien años”, algo que él ya había anunciado “hace mucho tiempo. Dije que cuando llegáramos a los cien años, ahí pararíamos y que hubiera una revisión de todo lo que hemos hecho, un trabajo de investigación y de historia”.
The editor of Litoral, Lorenzo Saval, has stated this Monday to Efe that “there comes a moment when you have to stop,” in his case after more than fifty years of dedication to the magazine, since he took the helm in 1975, a period in which “there have been good moments, bad moments, a lot of prestige and also a lot of oblivion. It has been an immense task,” Saval said, who believes that “there is nothing better than stopping exactly at one hundred years”, something he had already announced “a long time ago. I said that when we reached one hundred years, we would stop there and that there would be a review of everything we have done, a piece of research and history.”
The magazine’s leader stressed that “this decision is in no way due to economic issues,” since “it is not because there has been no help or anything of the sort, but because of the fatigue that comes with the years”, which leads him to think “that more time is not worth it. It is a way to end well, as things must end well, at a sweet moment for the magazine, with awards, with history, to rest a little and do other things.” Therefore, he labels this farewell as “an end of a cycle that stops now”, and admits that “now there are a lot of people who want to continue it, that this doesn’t end, but we will see what happens.” He also noted that he has several meetings pending with institutions where the continuity of the magazine could be addressed under another management model, but for now he only plans to “listen and see what they propose”.
About the farewell issue, he revealed that it will feature “more than three hundred poets who have had an association with Litoral,” and that they will be accompanied, as always, by illustrations from prominent visual artists.
Saval has stated that he closes this phase “with a sense of mission accomplished,” but now “we must stop,” because the magazine “absorbs in an impressive way,” and in light of the “spectacular affection” he has received upon announcing his decision, he hopes that “the successor will take up the baton, if there is a successor, of course.”