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That's when three people, Karen Carter, Vic Niclas and Christine Felder, launched an advertising supported, English language magazine for Mojácar. The first.copy was folio size, in black and white on plain paper and carried a price tag of 80 pesetas, although the cover fee was never, in fact, charged. Talismán, as it was called, grew, adding spot colour and becoming part of the local society. However, after 2 years the founders decided to sell it as they had each developed other interests, and it was purchased by Martin and Carol Rouse. Under their stewardship the magazine started losing its appeal and circulation had dropped to 500 copies a month. Within 18 months Talismán was again up for sale. In November 1987, whilst exploring the Mediterranean coastline, we arrived in Mojácar for the first time. We returned in January 1988, decided to settle here and, with no experience whatsoever in either journalism or publishing, bought the magazine "as a hobby". The idea was to spend about half the month working on Talisman and the other half exploring Spain. Ignoring the way the magazine had been created up to then, we immediately set about computerising as much of the rag as we could on to a Sinclair QL. We had the computer, its monitor and the printer balanced on cardboard packing crates in a rented apartment and did most of the pasting up on the floor, with finished pages laid out on a bed. These were then taken to the local printer, Mojácar Graphic Arts, where the printer made expensive, life size photographs of them and transferred these on to printing plates. The first edition under our control appeared at the beginning of May 1988. However, the QL developed a problem and we were unable to find spares locally, so we drove to England, bought the needed pieces, rushed back and repaired the computer just in time to prepare the June issue. This one had complex spot colours on the cover and an experimental business directory inside. By July the cover had become glossy, the directory was growing and another iconic feature, the running map along the bottom of the pages, put in a primitive appearance. We had driven to England yet again, and researched material for the July and August editions to carry a two part article on a new product - satellite TV. In those early days, when motorways were few and far between, and speed traps were even fewer and further between, we were making the journey five to six times a year, sharing the driving and sleeping as we travelled non-stop to England. I should point out that charter flights from Almería, with Tarleton Travel, were limited to Thursdays, and the round trip to collect someone from Alicante airport required nine to ten hours. It was a busy period indeed, as we struggled to learn the magazine publishing trade and simultaneously sought to restore Talismán's image. It worked! We attracted more and more advertisers, despite also raising our advertising rates. In just that first year Talismán grew in both size and quality, and circulation quintupled. What's more, readers had started to send in contributions. |
To improve quality we invested in a brand new product, an A4 laser printer, which cost us £3,000! Thanks to this printer, we were then able to pioneer another idea, the use of polyethylene sheets to print out magazine pages in order to by-pass the printer's camera. (we still needed his camera for pictures and photos.) The printer himself was dubious, but having seen the results became enthusiastic and swore us to secrecy. For any cheap flyers he was now able to undercut his local rivals! Our next major, high-tech purchase was an A4 size flat bed scanner, for £2,000. It came with version two of "Picture Publisher" by Micrographx. (I don't know if "Photo Shop" even existed at that time.) Now we could scan pictures and photos and print them directly from our laser printer. We were forever free of the printer's expensive camera! What's more, we could retouch our photos. We continued our buying spree, getting a better laser printer, a succession of newer and bigger computers and improved software, such as Coreldraw!, Aldus PageMaker 3 and Windows 286 - and always legal versions.* Armed with cutting edge technology, and version 5 of PageMaker, we could now experiment with creating 4 colour process transparencies for the printer, and our first full colour cover to be produced "in-house" appeared .. In 199. we decided that we needed a more frequent, bi-lingual publication and brought out "What's on / Que Pasará". This was a guide to entertainment in the Mojácar area, and published every week between Easter and October. In a fit of megalomania we adopted the name of "Talismán group". In the spring of 2001, in a fit of masochism, we started
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