Augustus Gloop, the boy from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who loved sweets and fulfilled his dream of diving into a big pool of chocolate, will continue to be a "fat" boy instead of "huge" and Matilda, like it or not, will choose for a reading of Joseph Conrad and not of Jane Austen.
The Santillana publishing house, which has been publishing Roald Dahl's books in Spanish for more than 40 years, will not make any changes to the works of the British writer. This has been assured this Wednesday in a statement, in which he specifies that "we have transmitted to his agents that we are not going to adapt his books."
The controversy came earlier in the week, when the English versions of some Dahl novels published by Puffin Books with the help of 'Inclusive Minds', an association whose mission is to “tear down barriers and challenge stereotypes to guarantee that all children can access and enjoy great books that are representative of our diverse society”, as highlighted on their website.
In them, some words were changed to less offensive synonyms. In Las brujas he went one step further and added a phrase that never existed before. In a paragraph that in the original explains that the protagonists are bald under their wigs, it can now be read: "There are many other reasons why women can wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that."
Readers and critics were quick to cry out to heaven, starting with Salman Rushdie himself, who assured on his Twitter account that "Roald Dahl was not an angel, but this is absurd censorship."
At the time the controversy broke out, Alfaguara Infantil y Juvenil, a publisher that has the rights in Spanish to Roald Dahl's books and publishes them throughout the Spanish-speaking territory, specified to La Vanguardia that "no change had been made in these editions" and advanced that soon they would consult what the next steps to take would be. Today they have offered an answer to the most restless and have recalled that the publisher "bet on this author from the beginning" and we have never stopped doing so. His books have always been a fundamental piece in our valuable catalogue, which has been published for a few years under the Loqueleo label."
And they add: "We have always defended children's and youth literature, and published books, without paying attention to any type of censorship, regardless of the fashions and circumstances of the moment. We publish books without complexes, timeless, that do not underestimate the reader. We pride ourselves on This is because the profession of editor can only be understood from respect for readers and authors, and from honesty with the stories that we are entrusted with and we decide to publish".
