The blinds have been up for just over half an hour and there are already more than twenty people queuing to enter the Sant Jordi bookstore. This place is on Ferran Street, one of the most central streets in Barcelona, and its sobriety endures in the middle of the sea of lights and colors of the carcass, fast food and souvenir shops.
Cristina Riera, who is now in charge of the bookstore, makes her way through the buyers who fill the narrow aisles of the store and snakes between the shelves to find the copy that a customer has requested. She is in one of the shop windows and, as she leaves, she looks back at the line of people that is growing longer and longer and smiles, incredulous.
Those waiting congratulate her on the feat, but also give her encouragement and share their condolences. Because the bookstore is not his. It belonged to her husband Josep, who died last week, aged 58. “I am overwhelmed. I don’t believe this is happening. These are very hard days, but this love gives us a lot of warmth,” he says.
The line of readers has been constant since Tuesday, when a message began to spread through WhatsApp groups reporting Josep’s death and asking to go to the business to buy books and help lighten the warehouse. “But we didn’t write that message!” says Cristina, who points out that they only notified their closest friends.
“We were very embarrassed to ask for help. We wanted to be discreet about the situation, but I guess word spread around the neighborhood and look now,” he says, with a half smile. To a large extent, the success of the message is based on the fact that it explains that Sant Jordi has been a victim of the gentrification that is ravaging the neighborhood and has to reduce stock because it must leave the premises, but that is not entirely the case.
Josep founded the bookstore with his father in 1983, in what had been an old hat shop. The store already had classic ocher-colored furniture, with finely decorated frames and hydraulic tiles that it still has today. “The furniture is ours. They bought them at the time and today they are classified as emblematic heritage and are protected. But we are renting the premises,” explains Riera.
The building in which they are located is owned by an investment fund with which they have never been able to speak; only through burofaxes in which they have demanded rent increases. In the last communication they were informed that they would be kicked out of the premises in a few months. The deadline is mid-February, just two months after Josep’s death.
Since the contract was in her name and the property “is not going to negotiate”, Cristina has all her hopes placed in the City Council and the Generalitat. “We cannot take the furniture somewhere else, so we are trying to get the administration to take charge and for the entire premises to remain as the city’s heritage. They could make sure it remained a bookstore. But come on, anything but a phone case store,” this woman begs.
4,000 titles saved in the mind of a bookseller
While telling her story, Cristina keeps glancing sideways at the interior of the bookstore, where various friends and family who have come to help her wrap gifts, look for copies, and collect them by piece. “We have to sell everything we can now. First, because it is necessary for family support and, second, because the burden must be lightened. stocks in case we have to move,” he explains.
Because if you can’t stay on Ferran Street, Sant Jordi has a plan B. Years ago, they won a competition that gives them the right to occupy an officially protected commercial ground floor on Robadors Street, in the Raval neighborhood, near the Film library. But, even though it would have been cheaper and more comfortable, Josep never wanted to leave.
“He was a fighter and an example of resistance in the territory.” “He stayed because he didn’t want to give his neighborhood away to speculators.” This is how activists from neighborhood and neighborhood assemblies remember him, to which Josep attended and where he is remembered with sincere affection.
The same thing happens among your clients. Carmen is an editor and was a regular at the bookstore. He hadn’t been here in years, as many as it had been since he moved to another neighborhood, but when he saw the news of Josep’s death, he didn’t hesitate to return. “He was my bookseller for many years and I want to help him and his family one last time,” he explains, while waiting in line.
Cristina gets excited every time she hears a story like this. And he assures that a new one arrives day after day. “Everyone writes to me…” he says, smiling. “But nothing surprises me. Especially considering that I myself fell in love with it here, in this bookstore, 30 years ago,” she recalls.
Josep was dazzling with the love he had for the neighborhood and its books. So much so that he knew his business inside out. “We don’t have a computer, it was all in her head,” says Cristina, somewhere between proud and overwhelmed. The title and location of the more than 4,000 copies rested in his bookseller’s mind and now it is his wife and her family – coming from Mallorca – who have to look and give away to find what they are looking for.
“All hands are welcome,” says Cristina. Between inventory chaos and unexpected lines, they have a job they didn’t count on. “My friends are making schedules to take turns and come help. They are even trying to make time for me to go to the hairdresser and take care of myself a little,” he explains between laughs.
But, for now, she will not leave Sant Jordi. Not until I can assure him a decent future. She knows she is facing a titanic feat, but she is grateful that the long lines of neighbors help her in her feat. “People are showing that they want a bookstore,” he says. And you’re right, it works. Just this Wednesday they received a visit from Mayor Collboni, whose office in Plaça Sant Jaume is barely 200 meters away.
“Ferran Street is so degraded that we cannot allow this small redoubt to be lost. As a neighbor, I will fight it until the end, because it is in my hands,” asserts Cristina, who has taken over the heroic deed that Josep began years ago emulating the knight Sant Jordi.
Like him, this bookseller also faced his particular dragon and, although the battle is not over yet, he has the support of a neighborhood willing to show its teeth before the beast and defend one of the last strongholds of this neighborhood eaten by the gentrification.
#Queues #readers #save #Sant #Jordi #Barcelona #bookstore #refuses #perish #face #gentrification
