How to begin?
With this, perhaps: I’m not Spanish.
Therefore, it was only after I began working at Santillana that I realised what a well-known publisher it is in Spain. People’s faces would change when I told them where I worked, softening into something like nostalgia. Taxi drivers sang to me long-remembered jingles from adverts for summer reading. At first it surprised me. Then I began enjoying telling people, anticipating the flash of recognition, the memories they would inevitably share. And then I began to feel proud.
Santillana is special to people for other reasons too. The company was founded in 1958 by Jesús Polanco. Polanco's aim was to create and disperse textbooks to help increase literacy at a time when Spain was still under Franco’s dictatorship and education was not equally distributed. When the transition to democracy began after Franco’s death, in 1975, Polanco became known as the Editor de la transición, pioneering freedom of the press in the still-young democracy and setting up some of the biggest and most well-respected media companies in Spain. Santillana is mainly an educational publisher, and their creation and growth also marked a separation of church from state in education. For many decades it led the market in doing this. There is a lot there to be proud of.
However, that’s all set to change. In 2020 Santillana was sold to Sanoma, a Finnish company, meaning that it is no longer a proud Spanish brand. Since it was sold, the new parent company has set about major restructuring, which - as these things tend to go - means firing the old guard in order to modernise the company and make it more efficient, which - as these things tend to go - one could read as: make it more profitable for shareholders.
A month ago Sanoma announced an ‘ERE’. It stands for Expediente de regulación de empleo - a redundancy plan through which the company seeks authorisation to dismiss a large chunk of their staff. In our case this equates to laying off 20% of the workforce. I had never heard that term before. I'm learning a lot of new words. I'm also learning a lot about the people around me.
The Comité, a group of colleagues who liaise with the national unions to represent us at the company’s negotiating table, is made up of seven incredible women. After the first meeting with company heads, they gathered the workforce to update us on the situation. I was expecting something very informal, possibly even a little shambolic. But, when I walked into the conference room, it was already full of people. There were two huge screens set up, with national union reps dialed in and ready to answer all our questions and concerns. The Comité were handing out badges, designed by the marketing team, who were using their skills, normally employed to promote the company, in order to save our jobs. They had created an Instagram account, an X account. There was talk of protests and strikes. The room was buzzing with energy, with the will to unite and fight the ERE. The Comité put everything together, to give us the best chance at doing so, in just two weeks.
On the other hand, I’ve also learnt that there are people, previously held in high esteem, that have an agenda focused on profit versus people, on individual gains over the collective. For that reason, the meetings with the Comité are inspiring and depressing at the same time. I’m invigorated by the unity, reminded once again to feel proud of Santillana, its long history and the esteem in which it is held throughout the country, but depressed by the reasons we are there. Which, in my opinion, we can reduce to simply: greed.1
There was another reason that I used to feel proud when I told people where I worked - the same shamelessly brown nose reason I gave during my interview - it was my dream job. I got to say to people: ‘I’m an editor at a publisher’. As a writer and a life-long reader, writers and editors are heroes to me. To be able to put myself in that same category, even in a very small and not particularly glamourous way, was one of the happiest moments of my life. Here was a job that I was truly proud to do, and to announce to people.
Earlier this year I took a short sabbatical and during that time I began thinking about what I wanted the next chapter of my life to look like. Redundancy is not a bad option for me and part of me is excited by the idea. But, although I’m open to change and to the new, it remains sad. Nostalgic even. I’ll be leaving behind a place, a people2 and a period of my life that has covered huge change and growth. When I first moved to Madrid, I could never have imagined I would be in a position to apply words like ‘writer’ and ‘editor’ to myself. When I arrived here, even though I was 34, I had barely begun to figure out some of the basic stuff, such as who I was and what I wanted to do with the span of life that had been allotted to me. My five years at Santillana have encircled a time where I've really begun to come to terms with myself (or start to). It feels like the end of a relationship, one that has now soured a little and lost its sheen, thus making me both sorrowful, and free.
At the time of writing, we still don’t know what will happen - if the company will succeed in cutting 20% of staff or whether that number will reduce, or better conditions, such as voluntary redundancy, will be offered. Our office is filled with the red and white posters declaring No nos quiere, stickers with the same slogan are plastered on closed office doors. In another circumstance, all those colours dancing together might feel festive. The deadline for the negotiations is the 30th of October and to date the company tactic appears to have been to obfuscate information in order to waste time, though I’m not sure to what end. If I go, I’ll at least be glad that I'll take the place of someone else who wants to stay. But that doesn’t excuse the methods or the reasons and it’s truly sad that something once proud and brave has to end this way. Because it is an ending. I’m not Spanish, but I am part of Santillana now and I know that even for those that survive the layoffs, the company will be something very different to what it once was.
#noalereensantillana
In the interests of not damaging the union’s negotiations, I just want to point out that this is a personal account of my time at Santillana and of what I’ve observed. It’s also possible that some of this information got lost in translation as my labour law vocabulary isn’t that hot!
All the love to some of my favourite colleagues (past and present) who are reading this. Thank you for all your support over the last five years, and for welcoming me so warmly at the beginning ❤️
I am thinking of you today, Jayne, and sending good energy for the best possible outcome. Thank you for fearlessly stating your Truth. As I said to another writer, our willingness to be vulnerable with others is a strength that brings unity. Carry on!
Very well explained. Must be liberating to be able to write this story down, thank you for opening up on this and sharing it. Certainly as we talked the other day: every death is also a rebirth. Know that Santillana might not want you but the world does and you'll certainly be closer to where you need to be <3 love you!