A new life for 300,000 books

Celrà (Gironès)How many lives can a book have? In Celrà, straddling Girona and Empordà, for 16 years a recycled reading project has been beating, giving a new life to more than 300,000 books. It shares space with the town library in the old Pagans Factory, a gem of Catalan industrial modernism converted into a municipal space, where the Town Hall coexists with the municipal swimming pools, the library, the music school, art school, and a civic center with a bar and restaurant, and a free indoor play area for children and babies.

This is the Connexió Papyrus association, born in 2009 from the concern of two librarians from Celrà and one from Salt who saw how year after year they had to remove hundreds of books from the catalog to renew the collection and free up space. A large space lined with shelves full of books classified by genre, with different sofas upholstered in African fabrics that invite you to lounge in them. “Many people come to read and spend the afternoon –explains Jordi Artigal, one of the founding librarians–. It’s like a library of chance for people who love books”.

However, the books here are not for loan, but are sold. Connexió Papyrus was clear from the start: “We had to pay to give them value, but that’s also why we have never raised prices”, Artigal details. They are two euros per book for each adult and fifty cents for children. For those who want to visit, the space is open on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays from 4 to 7 PM thanks to a team of twelve volunteers who commit to dedicating their time there one afternoon a month. This year we celebrate Sant Jordi on a Thursday, but if it fell on an opening day, they would still close because it is a day to “give all the protagonism to the booksellers”.

Behind the book sales, however, there is a huge amount of work behind closed doors in classifying the funds they receive. “At first we threw nothing away, not even the phone book”, recalls Artigal. Now, however, all volumes pass the same filter: being in good condition, having a minimum of interest, and valuing that they can find a new reader. There is no shortage of books: to those that arrive from libraries, especially from villages, are added those from private individuals who inherit an apartment and empty it or who decide to have a lighter library.

Literary floods

Despite the selection, Connexió Papyrus quickly encountered a space problem: “Every month 2,000 books arrived and 200 left.” This is how the Rius de Llibres project was born, with an agreement with the Girona City Council, which feeds the literary offering in six public spaces in the city with a shelf where they can be taken for free. The association also has an annual fee of 24 euros for other entities that wish to receive books. And following an agreement with the children's publisher Kalandraka, from Tortellà (Garrotxa), they supply the Guimerà 76 space, in Salt, where they invite 250 families each quarter to pick up a book for free.

According to Artigal, this project would not be so sustainable if it were not for the support of the Celrà City Council, which has always provided them with a space next to the library. In fact, they share space for exhibitions. “Celrà is a wonderful and interesting town on a human level –points out the co-founder of Connexió Papyrus–. It is a town that has spaces to create community and is respectful of people's initiatives.” The entity supported the creation of the Literature of Soca-rel festival, which is now in its third edition and is a space where there are constant activities on afternoons week after week. It has four reading groups, books are presented there, it has also acted as a publisher and manages a library seminar in the schools along the Ter river and a creative writing workshop at the Institut de Celrà.