They are subversive, intelligent and hard-working. They sell the books they want, not those that a distributor imposes on them. They feed their social networks with prescriptive content, organize reading clubs, presentations, events, concerts and conferences. Are the sugarcane booksellerscreatures who move away from cultural beatery, pay the freelance fee and understand the bookstore as the epicenter of an intellectual community. Madrid, Palma de Mallorca, Malaga, GrenadeBarcelona, Zaragoza, Cordova, Seville, Salamanca… Each city has its anti-system bookseller and bookstore. They do not consider themselves entertainers or cultural managers, nor shopkeepers. They are full-time readers. People who give up the predictable.
Currently, in Spain there are almost three thousand bookstores, at a rate of six for every one hundred thousand inhabitants. There are fewer than those that existed a decade ago, among other things due to Cegal’s change in criteria when counting them. A tobacconist or a stationery store with books is not a bookstore. Unlike those stores that opened their doors after the 2008 crisis or those that survived the lean times, the sugarcane booksellers are reluctant to unionize, to the corporatism of catechism and the homily of the lack of readers. After the pandemic, it seems to have become very clear that the physical experience of the book goes beyond its sale.
Meeting places
María Fernández, soul and driving force of the Crazy Mary bookstore
ABC
In less than a week, at number 32 Echegaray Street, the Crazy Mary bookstore has offered readers a concert with the musician Pablo Martos and a reading club with Hector Abad Faciolince about Victoria Amelina, the Ukrainian writer murdered by Russian troops in Kramatorsk. Located in the heart of the Letras neighborhood, a few streets from La Mistral, Sin Tarima or La Buena Vida, this is the most free bookstore in all of Madrid. More than a literary background, which it has, Crazy Mary houses within it permutations of the same idea: literature as the space of discovery and curiosity. All in a cozy and intimate space. «Something changed after the pandemic. We needed the experiences, especially those linked to culture, to be in person. Bookstores are places that are alive and people feel it and enjoy it: the bookseller’s selection, meeting other people. “Bookstores have become meeting places,” says this woman with curly hair and overwhelming energy.
Also in Madrid, at number 60 Pelayo Street, between Chueca and Salesas, Laura Riñón carries Poppies in October, a bookstore with cozy spaces, flowers next to a typewriter, soft armchairs and intense literary activity. Laura, who is as much a reader as she is an adventurer, has been a flight attendant for 22 years, also a writer and now a bookseller. She described this place in her third novel and made it a reality in 2019. «I thought of it as a home. I wanted to create a house in which to receive people who had my literary affinities. I never talk about selling books, but about recommending them. I’m not talking about clients either, but rather about readers.
A detail of the Amapolas bookstore in October, directed by Laura Riñón
ABC
“Serving a customer is only part of the story”
Can there be an Andalusian Proust? Absolutely! A bookstore that hosts such a white Heart Order and organizes Proustsian Cupcake competitions is not just anything. In the year 2012, Daniel Aguilar He dreamed that he opened a bookstore called ‘Lost Time’. There is no doubt: the dream of reason produces great booksellers. «I am not against modernity, but I am against Adamism. I want to remind people, because of the type of book I sell, that ‘Tristam Shandy’ has also existed. The bestseller thing doesn’t work for us. I put one in the window and no one buys it. What sells the most in Seneca and Cicero. There is a very personal seal and criteria. Without a doubt, an ecosystem of literary objects ready to explode.
“Serving a client is only part of the story,” explains Daniel Aguilar in a tone as lucid and emphatic as it is Napoleonic. «We have a YouTube channel, reading clubs for Russian and Hungarian literature, a Kafkaesque club, a reading club in master class mode. For book day there was an auction of out-of-print books. We are a lodge in the 19th century style, only we do admit women, but it is almost Masonic. This is my bookstore. We perceive and try to organize the world from our humble pulpit.
Daniel Aguilar, founder and owner of the ‘El tiempodido’ bookstore, in Granada
ABC
In front of the Roman Temple of Córdoba, at number 7 Claudio Marcelo Street, a door to the underworld opens. It is in Agatha’s Kingdom, a bookstore specialized in history, maps, Gothic literature and fantasy sagas, and which since 2023 has functioned as a card library and cabinet of curiosities. This is how he defines it Maria Isabel Molina Rey, who after thirty years of practice as a historian and archaeologist, decided to undertake her own journey to the center of the earth. As soon as he enters the door, the visitor is greeted by Lucifer, a black cat with big green eyes, who then disdainfully climbs onto the yellow sofa. «I played with history and cartography, because I have dedicated myself to those topics for years. That’s why it is a Bookstore-Cartoteca. I try to create a kind of Cabinet of Curiosities, hence the theme of curious books, stationery. I prepare interviews and book presentations. I’m still small, that’s why a Santiago Posteguillo doesn’t come here, but there are many writers who ask me for a conversation, here, on the couch, to broadcast it on the YouTube channel, which is called the Agartha Sofa.
Maribel Molina Rey, from the El Reino de Agartha bookstore
ABC
«I question the traditional concept of the back-end bookstore»
Not a single one of those consulted for this report has overlooked the concept of the in-depth bookstore, meaning those that have a wide and varied editorial stock that offers both new products and books that can be found in the long line of the publishing market. . «There has come a time in my professional life when I question the traditional concept of the back-end bookstore. “What does it mean to be a deep-rooted bookstore?” asks José Antonio Ruiz, founder and bookseller of the Luces bookstore, which opened in Malaga 21 years ago.
This 400 square meter bookstore, located at number 37 Alameda Principal, has 14 employees. «For us, the collection is not as important as the book and the selection that the bookseller proposes, regardless of the canon. If someone wants a copy, they ask for it and within twenty-four or forty-eight hours it is here. “I don’t want my staff to behave like warehouse workers.”
