Let's go back to the neighborhood bookstores we should never have left
My bookstore says Laura, from the Velazquez Bookstore (Paseo de Extremadura, 62), that the first thing she thought when the state of alarm forced her to lower the blinds in March was that she no longer had a future. She later recomposed herself (she is a bookseller, remember, a species made to adapt to setbacks) and she increased her presence on social networks with one goal in mind: keep the bookstore open, even if I couldn't physically be there.
She, who had never communicated, launched to expose herself in Instagram and, to the recommendations of books from her feed, she began to add direct ones with authors, reactivated the orders and made gift card options available to us, you know, that is why we said so much about “when you can come back”. She prepared her return by making community. And she made a community, taking care of us culturally.
In Puerta del Ángel we may not have a Public Library, but we have Laura, and that to those of us who have clung to the pages of books as a lifeline in these strange times, to those of us who have made the (pen) last purchases to shore up our collection in the face of an autumn and winter that are shaping up to be homemade, it gives us peace of mind.
She tells her, when she is asked how things are going, that the neighborhood has responded, that the neighborhood is responding. She can't guarantee we're reading more, but she sure is buying more. She talks about how word of mouth is having an effect and is amused that there are people who are discovering it now, after 23 years in business.
Laura raised the shutter of the Velázquez Bookstore for the first time on September 1, 1998, with that mixture fear, that she gives the uncertainty of facing something new, and of delusion for doing something she liked. Not surprisingly, the books had sucked at home. “My father was dedicated to the book sector, they were installment books. I always really liked that world, the world of the book; and I really liked being in contact with people, going to the Book Fair every year”, Laura Velázquez tells Traveler.es.
That is why she says that she became a bookseller by genetics, although also by chance. “I studied Law and was working in private companies. One day by chance I found that this bookstore was transferred and it was like saying: 'should I take the train or let it pass?'. At that moment I decided to take the train because it really was what I wanted. I left everything and dedicated myself to what I liked.
She believes that doing what you like is the key to everything in life and, in this specific case, to being a bookseller. And so, doing what she likes, she has built not only a bookstore, but also a warm and welcoming cultural space that she defines as "a magical corner where you can browse all the literary novelties" and order those that are not on their shelves.
In general, the only thing she asks is that we feel happy and at home when we enter her bookstore, that we feel her little room as ours, as that place in which to share about literature and books. "Make people happy, reading, coming to see me here, talking, participating with me in my activities."
And people are, we are, and they follow her, we follow her, in the projects in which she embarks, like that effort that she shows in recent times in introduce new writers.
“The other day I was promoting a new writer on Instagram because I do live shows every so often with them and, later, a client came to ask me for a book by that writer because she had made an impact on him. So I thought that 'how nice to have had an initiative that has helped other people to get to know each other and that on top of that they have come here later to buy the book'. It is a round satisfaction because you help other people in the bookstore function and then on top of that they come and recognize the work by buying the book”.
Little is said about the booksellers and the hours of fun, wellness and knowledge that we owe them. Because if they play with an advantage in something, it is in that There is no algorithm that can replace human treatment, knowing how to read the person who turns to you in search of the book they need at that moment in their life.
“This morning a lady came who wanted a story for a five-year-old boy who finds it very difficult to open the stories and she has asked me to bring her one. I know that and I have offered you a very attractive story for a child of that age. You cannot check that on Amazon because there is no one on Amazon, there are no people, there are no human relations.”
That is called complicity, it takes time to build it and it is the fruit that Laura is reaping now more than ever. “People want to buy here, in the neighborhood bookstore. I don't know if it's a matter of what we're going through and then people will forget, but I believe that people, especially young people, are starting to change their habits. I'm seeing a trend to buy from me, as a bookstore, and not buy from Amazon."
It does not deny what is new, what may be to come or what is already here. In fact, it defends the need to evolve, to have bookstores that are dynamic, that are authentic centers of cultural dissemination in our neighbourhoods; but without losing that ability to listen to what is outside, what people ask of you.
In her living room there is a pile of books. From Isabel Allende to Ray Bradbury, through Eduardo Mendoza. They are our assignments. Laura doesn't remember the first book she sold, but she does know what her neighborhood reads now. And yes, we have varied tastes.
If you ask her what a city would be like without bookstores, she is clear: without culture we are very, very little, so “a city that is empty of the brain. Most of us would be dead, a dead city."