These 'Coloquio Internacional de Novela' ('International Colloquium of the Novel') were held in Formentor on the island of Majorca, Spain between 1959 and 1962, and were paid for by international publishers.
The group operated between 1960 and 1968, and dedicated to the dissemination of the contemporary literary avant garde; they were joined during this time by publishers from an array of nations, including Japan, Denmark and Holland.
[4] The group's initial idea was to award a “Prix International de Editeurs”, given to authors not widely known beyond their national bounds.
[4] The Prix International, for literary prestige, was given jointly to Irish playwright Samuel Beckett and Argentine poet and short story writer Jorge Luis Borges.
It was the first major recognition of an Argentine writer and Borges commented "as a consequence of that prize, my books mushroomed overnight, throughout the western world.
"[3] The other prize, the Prix Formentor, was created for a novel already in print with one of the group's publishers, a work that would commercially benefit from international translation and dissemination in 14 countries.
[citation needed] The prize giving was moved to Corfu (1963), Salzburg (Austria, 1964), Valescure (Southern France, 1965) and Gammarth (Tunisia, 1966).
In 2012 it went to Juan Goytisolo; the jury expressed "admiration for the strength, example and independent judgement of a writer whose literary work belongs to the great narrative tradition of the Spanish language.