Beatriz de Moura, founder of Tusquets Editores and key figure in Spanish publishing, has died in Barcelona on Friday aged 87. The publisher announced her death on social media, describing her as a 'brilliant and unprejudiced woman, cosmopolitan and combative'. She led the imprint for over four decades, now owned by Grupo Planeta since 2012.
Tusquets Editores stated in a release: «We regret to announce that Beatriz de Moura (1939-2026), founder and literary director of Tusquets Editores, has left us today, a brilliant and unprejudiced woman, cosmopolitan and combative, precursor of so many things and soul of the publisher».
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1939 to a diplomat father, De Moura lived in several countries before arriving in Barcelona in 1956 as a teenager. She learned publishing in the 1960s, working at Editorial Gili, Salvat, and Lumen, where she met Esther Tusquets. In 1969, she founded Tusquets with her first husband, architect Óscar Tusquets, starting with 165,000 pesetas in a family apartment.
Early collections like Cuadernos Ínfimos and Cuadernos Marginales stood out for innovative design. In 1970, she published Gabriel García Márquez's Relato de un náufrago, the imprint's first bestseller. In 1977, she launched La Sonrisa Vertical with Luis García Berlanga. Tusquets published authors such as Jorge Semprún, Almudena Grandes, Fernando Aramburu, Milan Kundera—whose works she translated herself—and John Irving, opening Spanish culture to the world.
De Moura received the Cruz de Sant Jordi in 2006 and donated her library to Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the publisher's archive to the Biblioteca Nacional de España in 2017. She was a pillar of Spain's cultural boom in the 1970s during the transition from Franco's dictatorship.
