What Maria Muntaner was like, according to her friend: “Her ease with books at a very early age was surprising.”

PalmBetween WhatsApp and Instagram notifications and Google Calendar alarms, 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 where we lived, there was a small table with a device with buttons and a curly cord: the telephone. The protagonists of this story are friends who, like so many others, have accumulated countless hours of conversation on the phone; so many that the parents of one or the other had to intervene in the conversation between the two friends because their respective families were incommunicado. Friendship, which could be the subject of a song, is a friendship that Lambada, from Kaoma, or You came running From Tennessee, is the one by the editor Maria Muntaner and Paula Fluxà, who today tells us about the daughter of Lleonard Muntaner (author, by the way, of the very beautiful photograph that accompanies this text).

She was born in Palma, in 1980, in a house where the dining room was not 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 shocking. Sometimes we would go into her father's office and there would be books and papers everywhere, all spread out on a large table. For me, going 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 that she conveyed from a very young age, according to Paula. In addition, due to the nature that inhabited the house, María had a skill that was not common among her classmates: "I don't know if it was the first project we did together, but it was the first one I remember. a lot for that," says Paula, with whom they suddenly hit it off, among other things because they shared a love of reading and drawing.

Although it seems obvious that María happily accepted the legacy of the publishing house her father set up, Paula mentions that she never heard him say he wanted to be an editor; but it was also "no surprise" when he decided to study Catalan Philology or when he started working with his father.

From two dolls who enjoyed bike rides and summer swims around the Sant Jordi neighborhood (where one of Paula's godmothers lived), Maria and Paula became teenagers who spent hours and hours around the curves of the Es Carreró bar in Palma, wearing bell-bottom trousers and Pasatiempo. Together, they also began to be active in Jóvenes de Mallorca por la Lengua when the association had only recently existed and, between songs by Els Pets, Sau, Lax'n Busto and Sopa de Cabra, they saw the first Correllengua and Acampallengua from the organization.

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