Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart y Martínez de Irujo, colloquially known as Jacobo Siruela (Madrid, July 15, 1954), is a Spanish aristocrat, 24th Count of Siruela, editor, writer, graphic designer, farmer and rancher.
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Biography
Birth and family
Jacobo was born on July 15, 1954, in Madrid, Spain, in the bosom of the House of Alba, one of the most important and traditional families of the Spanish aristocracy. He was the third son of the 18th Duchess of Alba de Tormes Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart and Luis Martínez de Irujo y Artázcoz, a son of the Dukes of Sotomayor and Marquises of Casa Irujo.
Like his older brother, Carlos Fitz-James Stuart y Martínez de Irujo, 19th Duke of Alba de Tormes and current head of the House of Alba, he inverted the order of his surnames, so his surnames are Fitz-James Stuart y Martínez de Irujo instead of Martínez de Irujo y Fitz-James Stuart.
In 1980, his mother granted him the title of Count of Siruela, GE, which dates back to 1470. In any case, as he belonged to the Republic of Letters, he always signed, apart from his complicated surnames, simply: Jacobo Siruela.
On November 1, 1980, he married María Eugenia Fernández de Castro y Fernández-Shaw in the Liria Palace, from whom he separated after ten years. From this union he had two children: Jacobo and Brianda.
For ten years, from 1990 to 1999, Jacobo had as his common-law partner the graphic designer and painter Gloria Gauger.
Since 2004 his current wife is Inka Martí Kiemann, whom he married in Venice, sharing a stay between Mas Pou, in Vilaür, Girona, Madrid and Larrodrigo, in Salamanca, where through his mother's inheritance he acquired a farm converted into a project ("Airhón Project") that combines biodiversity research with organic agriculture and livestock farming.
Career as an editor
After studying Philosophy and Literature at the Autonomous University of Madrid, he began his activity as an editor in 1980 with the publication of a bibliophile book by an anonymous French author from the 13th century, Le Morte d'Arthur, winning the first prize awarded by the Ministry of Culture for the best published book of the year.
In 1982, at the age of 26, he founded Ediciones Siruela. His first book, Sir Gawain y el Caballero Verde, inaugurated a collection in which all the most important novels of the Arthurian cycle were published for the first time in Spain. In 1983 he edited the Biblioteca de Babel, directed and with a prologue by Jorge Luis Borges and published in Italy by Franco Maria Ricci, and in 1987 he edited his own collection of fantastic literature, El Ojo sin Párpado.
In December 1985, the first issue of El Paseante appeared, an interdisciplinary cultural magazine that, from the broad and free perspective of the urban voyeur, offered a wide sample of the most important cultural and aesthetic ideas of the 1980s. Its last issue was published in 1998.
In 1989 he launched a contemporary literary collection, Libros del Tiempo, which opened with the famous essay by Italo Calvino Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio. Robert Walser, Amos Oz, George Steiner, Álvaro Mutis, António Lobo Antunes, María Zambrano, Peter Sloterdijk, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, James Hillman, Clarice Lispector, Cees Nooteboom, Edmond Jabès, Antonio Gamoneda, Juan Eduardo Cirlot, Henry Corbin, Walter F. Otto, Károly Kerényi, Raimon Panikkar, Gershom Scholem, Leonora Carrington, Luis Cernuda, Felisberto Hernández, Carmen Martín Gaite, Jostein Gaarder y Hans Magnus Enzensberger are some of the writers, philosophers and poets that are part of his catalogue.
Other collections designed and edited by Jacobo Siruela are: El Árbol del Paraíso, La Biblioteca Azul, Biblioteca Medieval, La Biblioteca Sumergida, Biblioteca de Ensayo (Serie Mayor y Serie Menor), Biblioteca Italo Calvino and Biblioteca Lobo Antunes, and the children's literature collection Las Tres Edades, directed by Michi Strausfeld, with hits such as Sofies verden and Caperucita en Manhattan.
He also published some books that represented a great editorial challenge, such as the edition of the greatest Spanish architectural treatise: El templo de Salomón by the Jesuit from Cordoba Juan Bautista Villalpando (1552–1608).
Works
In 2010, coinciding with the fifth anniversary of Ediciones Atalanta, Jacobo began his literary debut with the work El mundo bajo los párpados, chosen in 2010 in second place in the essay section among the ten best titles of the year according to the Babelia supplement of El País, among the ten best books of the magazine Qué Leer and in seventh place on the list of the outstanding ones of the Reforma newspaper of Mexico.
Also noteworthy in his new journey in Atalanta, and in connection with the publication of his two celebrated collections of fantastic literature in Ediciones Siruela (the Biblioteca de Babel and El Ojo sin Párpado), is the publication of two anthologies: one of stories about vampires (2010) as well as the Antología universal del relato fantástico (2013).
He is also the author of «Historia mínima de la Casa de Alba», published in the volume on El palacio de Liria (2012), together with texts by other authors.
In the autumn of 2015, and this time coinciding again with the tenth anniversary of Atalanta, he published his second essay entitled Libros, secretos.
In November 2017, together with Jaime Rosal, he edited a new anthology, this time dedicated to decadentism.
In November 2023, he published the anthology De planilandia a la cuarta dimension.
Awards
First prize awarded by the Ministry of Culture to the best published book of the year for La muerte de Arturo in 1981.
National Award for Best Editorial Work awarded by the Ministry of Culture in 2003 to Ediciones Siruela.
Daniel Gil Award for Editorial Design in 2004.
On November 27, 2014, he was awarded Person of the Year in Madrid for Fuera de Serie, the Expansión supplement.
On April 30, 2018, he was awarded the Medal of Merit in Mexico by the Universidad Veracruzana.
Titles and treatments
July 15, 1954 – June 9, 1982: His Illustrious Mr. Jacobo Martínez de Irujo y Fitz-James Stuart
June 9, 1982 – present: His Excellency the Count of Siruela
* See Royal and noble styles