“I once thought about leaving, but I can’t. There are very difficult seasons when something does not work out. But thanks to the fact that I have another job, I can combine it and compensate for one with the other, because I have economic muscles, ”says Hugo Prestel. Same He spent two decades combining his job as a bookseller on the slopes of Moyano with another job in the garbage collection service of the Madrid City Council. His story helps us explain the phenomenon of people who continue to bet on bookstore management despite fierce competition from big box stores, a huge range of entertainment available, and a local business crisis. In short, for pure commitment, romanticism and stubbornness.

Ever since her great-grandmother Mathilde started selling in the Lavapies area until she inherited the Moyano kiosk in May 2000, four generations of the Hugo family devoted themselves to selling books. A few months after he took over the business, he also started working on garbage. He first worked as a waiter with a temporary contract, and then became a garbage truck driver. Now he often passes through Vallecas, his neighborhood, driving through it and greeting his neighbors. Sometimes he even met with buyers of bookstores: “I bought some books from a woman and a few days later drove past her house in a truck. When I said hello to her, she was very surprised,” she laughs.

There was a season when Hugo In the morning I studied, during the day I went to the bookstore, and at night I went to the garbage heap to work. “It was something deadly, two very bad years,” he says. Shortly after opening, he realized that if he wanted to get some rest, he would have to hire people because his booth opens every day. Since then, he has two colleagues to help him and has devoted himself primarily to managing online sales and buying used books, which he later resells.

As he assures The job of a bookseller is much more difficult than that of a garbage collector.. The uncertainty that you don’t know how much you’re going to sell daily is even worse than the rainy days he has to work in the trash, which he admits are “deadly because you end up getting wet.” Despite everything, he is very optimistic about the future of paper books, which he believes they will be “eternal because people like them”. However, he has more reservations about the bookstores themselves, which he considers “complicated, just like any local business”.

change the life for books

Even though they don’t even know each other the stories of Tamara Crespo and Maria Fernandez are parallel, and they also serve to explain the romanticism that drives many book lovers to open their own bookstores. They both studied journalism (although Maria worked as an interior designer) and both quit their jobs to open bookstores with no idea of ​​how the business works or any previous experience. A jump into the void, which, they admit, they gave away more with their hearts than with their heads.

From the very beginning, they also agreed that they wanted their bookstores to act as more than just a business and become a place for meetings and conversations between readers. In a word, they should not be just a “book supermarket”.

Maria decided to take a chance by reading Bookshop and Geniuses, in which Frances Steloff tells the true story of how she managed to open her bookstore in New York City in the 1920s. Soon this small place began to be visited by intellectuals and writers, and it became an icon of the city. For this reason, when one day he was walking along the Barrio de las Letras with a book under his arm and saw the sign for an affordable store, he did not hesitate.

“This book has planted a germ. I was hypnotized like Don Quixote by romances of knights, with the idea of ​​a charismatic bookstore that opens knowing nothing but believing in trade,” says Fernandez. He quit his job and a month later opened Crazy Mary, located on Echegaray Street.

After two decades in the press, Tamara moved from Ceuta to Ureña, in Valladolid. This small town, known as “Villa del Libro” because of the number of bookstores, managed to fall in love with her a few years ago, so she promised herself that she would return to set up a business there. His passion for reading did the rest and Primera Página was born.

“I didn’t have a penny to invest. I started with books and they helped me get a computer and furniture.”, – says Tamara, who clearly sees that, in spite of everything, she made the right decision: “Change your life, your place, your job … She has a point of courage. D despite the huge amount of work, it’s worth it. I come to the bookstore happy”.

Saving the oldest bookstore in Madrid

These personal stories go hand in hand with some of the best news 2022 has brought us: opening of the Pergamo bookstore, the oldest in Madrid. Founded in 1946, it announced its closure in December 2021. Its owners, the sisters Lourdes and Ana Serrano, were retiring, so they put the space up for sale. The neighbor next door, who didn’t want to reveal his identity, decided to save it and reopen “before it was a pizzeria”., as one of his current employees explained. The penultimate demonstration that there are people who, despite everything, still want bookstores to be open.