According to her friend, Maria Muntaner was like this: “Her ease with books at such a young age was surprising.”

PalmBetween WhatsApp and Instagram notifications and Google Calendar alerts, it's painful to remember that, not so long ago, friends didn't send each other voice notes to communicate. In some corner of the houses we lived in, there was a small table with a device with buttons and a coiled cord: the telephone. The friendship of the protagonists in this story, like so many others, has accumulated countless hours of phone conversations; so many, in fact, that the parents of one or the other had to intervene in the two friends' calls because their respective families were unable to communicate. The friendship, which could have a song on one side... Lambada, from Kaoma, or You came running From Tennessee, it's the one by editor Maria Muntaner and Paula Fluxà, who today tells us about the daughter of Lleonard Muntaner (author, by the way, of the very tender photograph that accompanies this text).

She was born in Palma, in 1980, in a house where the dining room wasn't used as a dining room because it was "full of books". This is how Paula Fluxà, whom she has known since she was five, remembers it: "Going to her house was striking. Sometimes we would go into her father's study and there were books and papers everywhere, all scattered on a large table. For me, going there meant learning something new." As now, one of María's characteristic features when she was little was her brown curls, but also the intelligence and tranquility she exuded from a very young age, according to Paula. Furthermore, because of the nature that grew up in her home, María had a skill that wasn't very common among her classmates: "I don't know if it was the first project we did together, but it's the first one I remember." "That's why," says Paula, with whom she clicked instantly, partly because they shared a love of reading and drawing.

Although it seems obvious that María happily embraced the legacy of the publishing house her father founded, Paula mentions that she never heard her say she wanted to be an editor; but neither was it "any surprise" when she decided to study Catalan Philology nor when she started working with her father.

From two little girls who enjoyed bike rides and summer swims in the Sant Jordi colony (where one of Paula's godmothers lived), María and Paula grew into teenagers who spent hours and hours wandering the winding streets of the Es Carreró bar in Palma, wearing bell-bottoms and playing Pasatiempo. Together, they also began to be active in Jóvenes de Mallorca por la Llengua (Youth of Mallorca for Language) when the association was newly formed, and, amidst songs by Els Pets, Sau, Lax'n Busto, and Sopa de Cabra, they witnessed the first Correllengua events and Acampallengua from the organization.

Forty years later, María and Paula enjoy a quiet moment and a glass of white wine or vermouth. "I recognize in her the same qualities as back then: responsibility, creativity, management skills, strength, and commitment. She is a very pleasant, cheerful, positive person, and resilient in the face of difficulties." Paula, who says she can't remember life without being friends with María, speaks with admiration of the work the editor of Lleonard Muntaner has done: "Seeing her today as an editor makes me proud. She has managed to create her own brand, and I think that as a society we should be grateful to her. She hasn't limited herself to continuing what she already did; she has carefully crafted collections, with her characteristic touch: honesty and good taste."