Spain's Oldest Bookstore Fights to Survive: 176 Years of History at Stake
Some bookstores are more than shops. They are community archives, shelters against forgetting, places where time moves differently. Librería Hijos de Santiago Rodríguez, opened in Burgos in 1850, is exactly that: a place that survived a civil war, the postwar years, multiple economic crises, and a global pandemic. One hundred and seventy-six years of history. And now, for the first time, its doors are threatened with closure.
The news came this week as an unexpected blow: the Burgos bookstore has entered creditor proceedings and urgently needs to raise €60,000 to cover debts and protect its staff's jobs. Its owners, the sixth generation of a family that has devoted its life to books, have launched a crowdfunding campaign with contributions from as little as €5. And they added something that stopped me cold: «We have 176 reasons to stay open.»
Spain's writers responded. Juan Gómez-Jurado, César Pérez Gellida, Carla Montero, Máximo Huerta, Alejandro Palomas — names familiar to any dedicated reader — rallied to the cause. Gómez-Jurado, the most-read author writing in Spanish, with thrillers like Mentira, was quick to make a public appeal. When authors themselves cry out for a bookstore to survive, something profound is at stake.
I wonder what it meant to generations of Burgos readers to grow up with that bookstore as a landmark. In Bogotá, where I come from, neighborhood bookstores are disappearing one by one, and with each closure a piece of collective memory goes with them. Major digital platforms offer efficiency, but not what a 176-year-old bookstore offers: a bookseller who knows you, who knows what you'll read after a particular novel, who has watched three generations of your family pass through those shelves.
There is something in García Márquez — in the way he describes objects, places, houses that hold secrets — that makes me think of these old bookstores. The books that first change your life often find you through a hand that points them out. The hand of a bookseller who has spent decades reading and remembering.
If you can, find the campaign. Five euros is nothing. But it might be everything.
