Nelson de Matos. The baron of Portuguese publishing

Portugal has never had a “boom” in its literature; at best, it had a “ta-da!”, some illusions and domestic altars, some trips to Paris, a well-deserved Nobel Prize, but there was a time when there were tables everywhere, in cafés, in some offices, where the publication of books or magazines could aspire to cause scandal and commotion. Before business took hold and consumption subjugated all possibilities of daydreaming, before the drums for the masses to account for the silence, there was this fierce, conspiratorial margin. Above all, there was the strategic figure of the publisher, one of those generals from the backlands who deal with the mapping of the interior regions, drawing lines for mental dispersion. Nelson de Matos was the last baron in this picture, a young man who even entertained literary aspirations, and went to cafés to try to earn a crest, while he tried to crow in literary criticism, all things that would be forgotten, without leaving much of a memory. He started at Arcádia, then went to Moraes at a time when it was already in decline, and after the death of Snu Abecassis, who had edited his debut novel, he bought Dom Quixote, which he ran for 23 years until he sold it to the Spanish group Planeta in 2004, at a time when it was seen as the leading Portuguese publisher. He then faded away, and was still at Âmbar, before creating a publishing house under his own name, which soon fell through. Health problems had begun and he was quickly forgotten, having died last Sunday, aged 79, from respiratory difficulties.

As it is usually their job to invent doors, hold them open, and remain in the shadows, in order to gain prestige as publishers, it is necessary to make a list of the authors they have published, and names such as José Cardoso Pires, José Gomes Ferreira, Nuno Bragança, Maria Velho da Costa, Ruy Belo, Manuel Alegre, José Saramago and António Lobo Antunes have been included in his list… It is a fine list, although at a certain point he reaped the rewards of the work of other publishers, who made the discoveries and it was up to him to then go and collect them and promote their success. He ended up publishing two titles by Saramago, a book of short stories Objecto Quase (1978) and a novel, Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia (1977), and although he liked the next novel, Levantado do Chão , he did not believe it would sell. Published in 1980, it would end up being the book that changed the course for this writer, who was already 58 years old at the time, and who then embarked on an extraordinary rise, subsequently publishing four novels that decisively raised the bar for Portuguese literature – Memorial do Convento , in 1982, O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis , in 1984, A Jangada de Pedra , in 1986 and História do Cerco de Lisboa , in 1989. Only Agustina did not tremble, and continued undaunted in her 19th century, measuring herself against Balzac and Dostoevsky. And it is important to mention these two names since they seemed to be the only significant absences that prevented Nelson de Matos from claiming to be the monarch of Portuguese literary publishing. After it was founded in 1965, it was Snu Abecassis' heirs who approached him to propose that he take over the management of the publishing house, which at that time already had great prestige, but which he was responsible for expanding, above all through a strong focus on the graphic element, giving it an appearance more in line with the sobriety and distinction of the major European publishing houses, with Gaston Gallimard as his main reference.

Born on 25 November 1945, he began working in the media in the 1960s, at the newspapers Notícias da Amadora , República and Diário de Lisboa . He was one of the founding partners and a contributor since the first issue of the magazine and, later, editor of & etc., whose roots go back to 1967. It was somewhat by chance that he found his destiny tied to publishing, and when he was earning a living in an insurance company, looking to free up some time to dedicate himself to writing, in 1974, he was invited by one of the directors of this financial group to take over the management of Arcádia, which also belonged to them. But it was at Moraes, where he replaced Pedro Tamen, who had in the meantime been invited to be the director of the Gulbenkian Foundation, and who handed over the management of the publishing house to him, that he began to work with Portuguese authors and, focusing on these relationships, defined himself as a publisher of authors and not of books.