La Cuesta de Moyano, on the eve of the sales, in the year of its centenary, gives an ancient wineskin light to the low cloud morning of Madrid. In that lyrical gap that unites, defying gravity, the Retiro with the Paseo del Prado, is located what Paco Umbral called “the most read street in Madrid.” A hundred years are nothing or a lot. Perhaps an anecdote compared to some books that are for sale, such as a compilation of the writings of Pope Leo II, a Sicilian, which almost ten centuries later saw the light and that Juan Carlos Castrejón sells for 300 euros per copy, of both of which the work consists. Wrapped in cellophane paper and waiting for a buyer who loves history, very old things, theology or collecting. A walk through the thirty-three booths of Moyano, a quiet chat with the booksellers, shows the two sides of the anniversary. Carolina Méndez, president of the booksellers and the Soy de la Cuesta Association, is excited with buts and buts in this first centenary of an oasis of culture, where “even the Retiro runners buy books.” There is, in front of the hubbub for the round year, a bitter and shared complaint. They are “without water again.” That, among other immediate wishes, is what they begged of the Three Wise Men and the competent authorities. Despite the daily miracle of placing books inside and out, and as revealed by Lara Sánchez, hyperactive and multidisciplinary director of the Soy de la Cuesta Association, there is the nightmare of the aforementioned pipeline, “the booksellers in debt due to the bills for the spills” and some sheds where the blue-gray of the wood deserves a layer of paint, to protect against termites, graffiti and the elements that affect even the most resistant wood. There are those who vandalize the booths with bad spray marks when the night empties this part of the capital, the same hooligan phenotype that breaks the awnings and doorknobs. Related News TRAVEL standard No From Mary Poppins to The Little Prince: this town in Granada mixes several stories among its streets Antonio Távora In the streets of Alpujarra de la Sierra everything is related to stories, characters and authors of great literary worksSánchez clarifies what he asks of him to the new year and to the institutions: the improvement of night lighting and that the Cuesta is included, already in this year, in the Christmas lights plan 2025. So far, remember, they have placed “some light bulbs at the last minute ». Also letters with illustrious phrases in the pedestrian area. Lighting is very important for the cultural manager of the enclave, with even more reason, she emphasizes, when they are in the middle of the Landscape of Light, recognized a few years ago by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. However, there is also hope in Lara Sánchez, who knows the risks and attractions of combining avant-garde and tradition in the field of culture. Surprises await, anticipate. News in a program in which Paris, the avant-garde, will be present, while they are in talks with the House of His Majesty the King for a possible visit. And then the modular café, which would be the epicenter of the activities, ‘meeting point’, and a place of rest and improvised synergies between collectors, curious people and walkers. That cafeteria will be modular and, fingers crossed, it will initially be there this year. Coffee for everyone, warmth in the winter and refreshment in the hot months. When it arrives, the dynamics of the visits will change. There are many institutions that collaborate with the centenary, from the Madrid City Council to the Community, from the French Institute to the nearby Reina Sofía Museum. Pío Baroja visits the stalls of the ABC booksellersIn the words of the delegate of Culture, Tourism and Sports of the City Council of Madrid, Marta Rivera de la Cruz, the cafeteria “will give new life to an area so loved by the people of Madrid and so important for culture.” ‘Give them a coffee shop and they will move the world’, seems to be the desire of the regulars. In Moyano, the letters are the beginning, the end and the excuse for other activities. From the Community of Madrid they announce that La Cuesta will be the scene of a flamenco show at the Suma Flamenca festival, that the site is going to be declared BIC (Asset of Community Interest) and a photo cession for an exhibition. On the Cuesta, and it is what most adheres to the walker, layers are superimposed. That year of 1925 in which the Madrid council decided to move to this sloping street the former booksellers of the disappeared Atocha market who later took up residence at the gates of the Botanical Garden with the support of the intellectuals of the time, who signed a manifesto that reads like this: «Those who subscribe, lovers of everything that results in the benefits of culture and the love of books, and aware of the initiative of the Madrid City Council to build a permanent fair, would with great pleasure see that said installation be in a visible and easily accessible place, both for those of us who, in the aforementioned positions, are going to spend the best hours of our lives and those others who, without thinking, become fond of keeping and treating a book with great affection. …». A bust of Donald Trump in one of the booths IGNACIO GILThere is also a mix of ages that Paloma Grimaldos, responsible for booth 24, correctly points out, specializes in cinema, photography and cooking. “The younger ones read more than the older ones,” although it is no longer like when he helped his grandfather when he could, and the space “was working at full capacity.” There is a melancholy among booksellers, but pregnant with certain hopes. Carolina Méndez’s day is brightened by the visits of “José Luis Garci, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Javier Gurruchaga, Antonio Resines with his comics or Fernando Aramburu, who collects old Austral books.”Memories between pagesA mother’s child foreigner and Spanish father walks with a tricycle. His father apologizes for the rush, for the child sliding down the slope. A mother despairs because her daughters ignore ‘History of Trains’. A little further on, as if by weight, the almost entire newspaper archive of ‘Triunfo’ is clustered, in which the typography of the seventies and a headline by Manu Leguineche stand out: “I have seen Bangladesh reborn.” Along with it, the ‘Lustful Sonnets’ by Pietro Aretino. At a booth, a cartoonish bust of Donald Trump looks out on staff flanked by an American flag. In another, round canvases by the Cáceres painter Damián Flores are sold for 800 euros. All in an orderly chaos, the daily spectacle of these ‘buquinistas’ from Madrid so far from the Seine, so guardians of the treasure of the language just four steps from the Royal Academy. Within the books, by chance, subway tickets from the 1940s were found, love letters, anonymous photographs with an intimacy that could have passed through many hands. Or, even, a piece of Spanish history like the one that Paloma Grimaldos sold to an individual who later auctioned. A book by Rafael Alberti, full of salts and raised fists, dedicated to La Pasionaria, where the vate of El Puerto de Santa María gives the volume to “his close friend and colleague.”
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