Translation of essays in Francoist Spain: The case of Edicions 62, a Catalan publishing house

Some Spanish publishing houses played a central role in challenging Franco's regime from the 1960s - when the government introduced some measures promoting greater political openness - until the end of the dictatorship in 1975. In this chapter, I highlight the revolutionary role played within the Catalan publishing world by Editions 62 by focussing on its diverse essay series, in all of which Marxist critique was by far the hegemonic ideological perspective adopted. Thereafter, I outline some difficulties related to the translation of essays into Catalan at that time and finally, I concentrate on the analysis of one single and representative translation, Herbert Marcuse's L'home unidimensional (One-Dimensional Man), by taking a closer look at its path through censorship and the paratexts included in the edition. I base my analysis on the understanding of translated texts as "second-order observations", a concept articulated by Theo Hermans, whose origins spring from Luhmann's idea of communication found within his theory of social systems.