What was happening in the world the day you were born?

A customer enters A la Premsa d’Aquell Dia, a fascinating, captivating, indispensable shop at Joaquim Costa street 44, a Barcelona classic. He asks Àgata if she has any newspaper from June 28, 1957. She consults the volumes, handmade, indecipherable to anyone not from the house, and immediately finds that, from the requested day, they have the Diari de Barcelona, La Vanguardia and Abc. The customer is unsure if the recipient of the gift will prefer La Vanguardia or Abc, and Àgata offers to show him both copies. We accompany him to the warehouse. He climbs the two shelves – from floor to ceiling – where the newspapers should be. And, indeed, he finds them right away.

We witness the small daily miracle that has been happening in this family business for over thirty years. An intimate feeling of well-being arises every time they can satisfy the customer's demand. Àgata irons the newspapers so that they are in the best possible presentation condition, and the customer prepares to decide. “We have a very high satisfaction rate, close to 100%,” she explains. The stock is very large, and there are many acquisitions of stock, donations, and purchases that they have made over the years. The king of sales remains the same as the first day: the newspaper from the day of birth. A special gift that in times of almost absolute digitalization continues to provide comforting analog snippets. And a surprise: young customers also buy the newspaper from the year they were born for themselves or to give to friends. “We are selling many newspapers from the year 2000 onwards,” she reveals, which a few years ago was almost an anecdote. Surely because some people are already a bit saturated with screens, immediacy, and fragmented reading and desire an oasis that, at the same time, provides them with many other satisfactions.

It all began when Roberto and Rosa María, the parents of Àgata and Angèlica Costantini –the two sisters now in charge of the business–, seized upon the idea of a friend from Brussels who told them about a shop that sold old newspapers. With an initial collection of La Vanguardia that someone had kept for many years and which came into their hands, they decided to open the first shop in Carrer del Tigre. The iron discipline that the entire family involved in the business has exercised is admirable. Every newspaper or magazine that has entered the premises has been filed into volumes –organized by decades– which still allow them today to check what they have and what they don't. Also, every publication they sell must be erased –yes, with an eraser– because otherwise the stock can become unbalanced.

To be able to offer a service, the client must state exactly the date they desire. “We cannot offer a newspaper archive service, it is operationally impossible for us,” highlights Àgata. It’s the handicap of not having digitized either the newspapers or the stock they have. But they manage, and indeed they do. And with astonishing speed. Word of mouth was what served them best in the early days when they mainly catered to Barcelona clientele. Today they have their own website and receive orders from all over the State.

The most common, they reiterate, is to buy the newspaper from the birth date. But there are also other possibilities, such as all sorts of special dates. Golden anniversaries, for example. Some curious thematic examples. A client who buys every publication featuring the Beatles. A French artist who bought a quantity of newspapers from the Transition period and made an exhibition of them at La Virreina. A client wanted the newspaper where the list of children who returned from exile after the Civil War appeared; she was one of them. The son who bought a Vanguardia because the one looking at books on Sant Jordi’s day on the cover was his mother.

Other stimuli? Find in the classified ads the services of the pediatrician who attended you at birth. What was playing at the cinema the day you were born? What was the building where your parents lived like when you came into the world? How much did it cost to buy an apartment? This year the king has been the Civil War, ninety years since it began, and many nonagenarian birthday celebrations. A newspaper, whatever it may be, costs 37 euros. If you want it with a special cover, it will be 52. And with engraved initials, 58. Some special pieces are kept in a jewelry archive. Like the magazine with the news of the sinking of the Titanic, for example. How many newspapers and magazines do they keep? It's almost impossible to know. They say about 300,000 approximately. From the end of the 19th century to 2024. An impressive history of the written press in our country. A privilege that it exists in Barcelona At the Press of That Day.