La Central will open a new bookstore in Barcelona before the summer

BarcelonaLast summer, Antonio Ramírez was looking for premises in Madrid to open a new La Central bookstore – which would join the one in Callao and the one in the Reina Sofía Museum – but without intending to, he ended up finding it in Barcelona. “I looked at this premises at Consell de Cent 314 out of pure curiosity and I loved it,” he admits. Ramírez visited it in July, in the middle of the heat wave, and found the owner willing to rent it to him. “I didn’t want to end up with another 24-hour supermarket being installed,” he says, referring to the establishment that is right in front of the future La Central, which is scheduled to open its doors between May and June. “Even though we couldn’t pay the price that is being asked for a shop or restaurant next to Passeig de Gràcia, the owner preferred a book.”

The new La Central bookstore, the third in Barcelona, ​​​​will be located in Consell de Cent, a busy pedestrian street between Passeig de Gràcia and Pau Claris and will join the first, the one in Mallorca, founded in 1996 by Ramírez and Marta Ramoneda, and the one in Raval, opened in 200. 50 m² plus about 90 m² of cafeteria, this will have 250 on the main floor, which will also have a loft where we will open a cafeteria, and the lower level, of 100 m², designed for presentations and cultural activities." When they launched the first La Central, Ramoneda and Ramírez were approaching their thirties. "It was the ideal time to do things: we had drive and an age at which we would no longer do anything crazy," he admits. "Even so, I remember that many people told us that it was crazy to open a bookstore, because the world was changing towards digital books." Three decades later, Barcelona is in a moment of effervescence as far as the book business is concerned. "After the pandemic, a dozen new bookstores have opened in the city," says Ramírez. de Feltrinelli, who in addition to captaining Anagrama also has almost 100% of La Central's shares. Later they would like to open another one in Madrid and perhaps one more in some Catalan city."

A neighborhood with a growing network of bookstores

In the Eixample, where La Central de Consell de Cent –as it will be called– will open its doors in a few months, it will be surrounded by bookshops. Nearby are Documenta (Pau Claris, 144), Casa del Libro (Paseo de Gràcia, 92, and Rambla Catalunya, 37) and Finestres (Diputació, 249). There are also Laie (Pau Claris, 85) and Ona (Pau Claris, 94) –these two are practically opposite each other– and Jaimes (Valencia, 318). "Today I don't think there is another city in Europe that is so receptive to the creation of new bookshops, both medium and large, as well as author-based ones," says Ramírez. "If there are important communities of readers, the more woven the better. For now, bookshops have only one competition, which is Amazon. We have to find more attractive ways to sell our products than them."

The new La Central will have a café and a packed cultural programme. "We want the three bookstores we have in Barcelona to be complementary parts of a single body," explains the bookseller. "Here we will have a selection of 30,000 titles and there will be a significant portion of literature aimed at young people." While the Eixample is flourishing with new establishments dedicated to selling books, the opposite is true in Ciutat Vella. "There we had La Central in the Museum of History of Barcelona, ​​​​which we opened in 2008," Ramírez recalls. "And until 2018 it worked relatively well, but we closed after the pandemic, because for several years the Gothic Quarter has had no local life and all the bookstores have been closing. Sant Jordi on Ferran Street".