Bookseller Montserrat Úbeda, founder of Ona Llibres and language activist, dies.

BarcelonaThe bookseller Montserrat Úbeda died this Sunday, according to reports from the bookstore she founded on Gran de Gràcia street in Barcelona, ​​Ona Llibres. In 2020, Úbeda was also one of the founders of Pau Claris's Ona Llibres bookstore, with more than 1,000 square meters dedicated entirely to books in Catalan. Úbeda understood her work as a bookseller as an extension of her activism for the Catalan language and culture. She was recognized for this when she received the Vila de Gràcia Award in 2018 and the Sant Jordi Cross in 2019 "for her work in cultural dissemination through books and reading and for spreading the values ​​of Catalan literature and language."

Books were part of Úbeda's DNA, as she was the daughter of the editor Jordi Úbeda, one of the founders of the Ona bookstore on Gran ViaFrom 1962 until its closure in 2010, Ona was one of the bastions of Catalan books, a combat tool for normalizing Catalan literature, especially during the Franco regime, when it secretly sold copies. Montserrat Úbeda joined the bookstore as a teenager and, as she says, stayed forever. She even managed the bookstore during its last decade, until the financial problems of the distributor L'Arc de Berà, the owner of the store, led to its closure.

Three years after the closure of the Ona bookstore, a tireless Úbeda founded a new, smaller bookstore in Barcelona's Gràcia neighborhood, Ona Llibres. It was a time of uncertainty, with the recent closure of several bookstores, but that didn't discourage her: "I've worked as a bookseller since I was 13 and I've always heard recurring complaints about the decline of the book world," she argued, who tried to create "a space tailored and open to everyone" that maintained a specialization in Catalan literature and also maintained a specialization in Catalan literature and also.

The entrepreneur Tatxo Benet, a loyal customer of the Ona bookstore, followed her on this new adventure, and together they embarked on a more ambitious one: open a second, larger bookstore on Pau Claris Street in Barcelona, a new establishment with around twenty employees who shared linguistic activism with its younger sister in Gràcia. The new Ona Llibres was "a dream come true" for Úbeda. "For her, it was the return of Catalan literature to where it should never have left," wrote Tatxo Benet, her partner at Ona Llibres, this morning. "Montse's life has been dedicated to activism for Catalonia. [...] She has always been a beacon, a guide. Do you want to love Catalan? Do what Montse has done. Do you want to love books in Catalan? Do what Montse has done. Do you want to love Catalonia? Do what Montse has done all her life."

"Always on the front line, and always generous with everyone. She looked after literature, books, and culture with the best Catalan identity," she tweeted this Sunday to X Carles Puigdemont. Another president of the Generalitat, Quim Torra, also expressed his condolences, awarding her the Cross of Sant Jordi. "A tireless worker for Catalan culture and literature," Torra chimed in. "A firm woman, intolerant of mediocrity, boundlessly generous, patriotic." Jordi Turull, secretary general of Junts, also remembered her: "I will never forget so many books and so many letters that she sent us to prison, imbued with so much feeling and even greater commitment."