History

My grandfather, Josep Romanyà, was a cashier and worked for another print shop in Capellades. When his boss decided to leave Capellades, my grandmother, Maria Valls, a very driven person, encouraged my grandfather to set up his own print shop. It was 1955. They bought a second-hand Minerva letterpress to start printing. They started working in the dining room of their home, printing memorial cards and communion and wedding keepsake cards, which my grandfather would compose.

The first book they printed was Primer Llibre de Capellades, in 1958. In an interview, my mother, Gemma Romanyà, talked about this book: “Metal moulds were made to print the drawings, and my father composed the text, letter by letter, using metal letter blocks…”

When asked about her father’s work, my mother said: “I was amazed at his ability to turn a piece of writing –often presented in any old way, full of spelling mistakes, etc.– into a clean, orderly, balanced printed piece, highlighting what needed to stand out with larger type in perfect harmony with the smaller one. I thought: My father is an artist!”

My uncle, Joan Romanyà, was working at another print shop in the village doing print work. He immediately joined the family project, first helping his father and soon coming up with his own ideas. It was with him that Romanyà Valls made the leap to becoming an industrial-scale business. In the early 1970s, my uncle bought the land in La Torre de Claramunt, the company’s first rotary press and a binding machine. In the 1970s printing industry, books were printed on flatbed printers and the market was fragmented: some shops printed, others folded, others bound… Even the book cover was printed in one place, and the book block, the body of the book, in another.

At that point, my uncle thought about printing books on a rotary press instead of on a flat press: the paper was cheaper and the process was quicker, because the rotary press produced folded signatures, whereas with a flatbed machine the folding had to be done separately. He also envisioned delivering the finished book, printed and bound – an innovative service for the time.

My uncle died very young, at the age of 38, and my mother, at just 28, decided to try to carry on. She felt responsible for the eight workers already at the business and wanted to fight to continue the work of her brother, Joan, and of the entire family. The business was up and running, there was a complete set of new machinery, and there were substantial bank loans that had to be repaid. With her, Romanyà Valls earned a name for itself within the publishing sector; the print shop gained prestige and began printing books from renowned publishers. She was an amazingly driven person – very rigorous, reliable with clients, courageous.

She was a pioneer, always two steps ahead. We were the first to implement CTP, computer-to-plate technology, in 1997. It didn’t always go as planned. In digital printing, she was several years ahead, getting into it in the early 2000s, when the market was still not ready. Ten years later, digital printing became widespread around the country. She had a clear vision of where she wanted to go: a friendly approach, looking after clients and suppliers.

I cannot fail to mention the vital support that my father, Miquel Pujol, provided to my mother the entire time she was running the business. At a time when men took centre stage, my father not only supported her, but made her shine. My mother, Gemma Romanyà, age 40, in 1985. The Strachan rotary press, purchased in 2002.

My name is Elisenda Romanyà, and I joined the business nine years ago, in March 2017. My mother was already ill when I came on board. She left us in March 2018.

In those uncertain times, people asked me what I would do. I replied that I wanted to try and press on. I’ve been asked about selling the print shop several times. My answer has always been the same: I want to keep on fighting. After seeing how my grandfather, my uncle and my mother fought, I had no other choice but to keep on fighting.

I joined a well-established, well-known company in the Catalan publishing sector, with a specific way of doing things. A mature, recognised business. I have tried to freshen things up, to bring a different way of doing things. During this time, we have modernised, expanded capacities, improved internal efficiencies, worked to become more agile, and made our production as sustainable as we can. We have made several changes to the production process to make it greener (discussed in the sustainability section).

I have been asked whether over three generations the process of printing and binding a book has changed much. Yes, it has. I really like Tomasi di Lampedusa’s phrase “If we want things to stay as they are, everything will have to change” (Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga co’è, bisogna che tutto cambi). A lot has changed, but the spirit remains the same: looking after our clients, looking after the books we print, as if they were our own – they do have our name printed on them, after all.

I think we are laying the groundwork to continue into the 21st century. The goal is to ensure that the print shop continues, an obvious matter of survival. To do so, I believed we had to focus on improving the quality of the books we print and bind. But now I also think that in the era in which we live, stories are greatly valued, and I wanted to tell ours, because by doing so, we might just make our print shop stronger. And for that possibility alone, it’s worth it.