La Central, 25 years overcoming the test of time

When Antonio Ramírez and Marta Ramoneda decided to open the first La Central bookstore in the late 90s, they were taken for crazy. Everyone told them it was a business with no future whatsoever and that it wouldn't survive. They ignored them and opened the establishment on Mallorca Street in March 1996. Two years later, it had already become too small, and they expanded it with an upper floor. In 2003, La Central del Raval arrived, followed by those of the Reina Sofía Museum (2005) and Callao (2012) in Madrid, and the Museu d'Història de Barcelona (2008), proving that selling books was profitable.

With the celebration of their first quarter-century, both booksellers recall how the superstition that warned that bookstores were not viable has not been the only one that has pursued them over the years. The threat that the paper book had its days numbered against the ebook also appeared, a judgment that has permeated the popular imagination since the first decade of the 2000s. Faced with this panorama, Ramírez and Ramoneda saw how banks would not give them loans because, of course, the book was about to be surpassed by a new technology. As Irene Vallejo argues in El infinito en un junco. La invención de los libros en el mundo antiguo (The Infinite in a Reed. The Invention of Books in the Ancient World), the book has already passed the test of time, unlike cassettes, VHS movies, or DVDs, asserting itself as a long-distance runner. "Every time we have awakened from the dream of our revolutions or the nightmare of our human catastrophes, the book remained there, intact. As Umberto Eco says, it belongs to the same category as the spoon, the hammer, the wheel, or scissors. Once invented, nothing better can be done," explains the writer from Zaragoza in the prologue of her essay on the long history of this object.

The third plague that has not yet made La Central succumb has been e-commerce and, especially, Amazon. Ramírez explains that their response has been to promote bookstores as cultural spaces, where there are books, but also activities are held, and one can have a drink at the bar. Likewise, their website has been improving, always remaining a complement to the in-person experience they offer in their five establishments. As of today, book sales through their website only represent 4% of the total, a percentage that, although higher than the 1% of two years ago, remains low.

Nor has La Central been able to cope with an event that previously seemed as dystopian or from another era as a pandemic. Covid, confinement, and restrictions have only strengthened the relationship between traditional readers and books, in addition to attracting new followers, who saw fiction as the only leisure option available for months. For example, Ramírez points out how during the first wave they detected the arrival of residents from Eixample to the Mallorca bookstore who had never been there before, or how they have started to have a younger audience that asks them for a new type of readings.

Nor has La Central been able to cope with an event that previously seemed as dystopian or from another era as a pandemic

To celebrate all this, the Barcelona bookstore has created a literary prize that aims to discover new authors with unpublished and not too long works. The literary prize will be the main activity that La Central will undertake in this 25th anniversary, culminating in April 2022 with a big party and the selection of the winner. There will be two modalities ---Spanish and Catalan--- and no distinction of literary genre will be made. Far from the astronomical figures of other awards, the prize money will be 4,000 euros. Texts can be submitted from this Wednesday until the end of February next year.

The prize jury will be made up of booksellers and editors. In this regard, La Central will publish the winning works in a limited edition that will be sold exclusively in its bookstores and, once the contract's validity expires, the publishing houses that are part of the jury will have a preferential option to publish them. Acantilado, Anagrama, Blackie Books, Libros del Asteroide, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore and Sexto Piso are those that form part of the jury for the Spanish modality, and Anagrama, Arcàdia, Galaxia Gutenberg, Edicions del Periscopi and Raig Verd, those for the Catalan modality.