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Oblit Baseria. CASA ANITA

A corner for children in the heart of the Gràcia neighbourhood

A campaign recently ended in survival for this bookshop in Barcelona’s Gràcia district, with the premises being purchased thanks to the support of social media and the work of three illustrators

When the book­shop was threat­ened with clo­sure in No­vem­ber, three il­lus­tra­tors – Mercè Galí, Ramón París and Gus­tavo Roldán – do­nated il­lus­tra­tions to help raise funds to buy the premises. Casa Anita car­ried out a mi­cropa­tron­age pro­ject by sell­ing 250 signed and num­bered screen prints of each of the il­lus­tra­tions.

How was Casa Anita born?
The book­shop has been open for 16 years and it spe­cialises in chil­dren’s and young peo­ple’s lit­er­a­ture and il­lus­tra­tions, which is a com­pli­cated spe­cial­i­sa­tion. In fact, when we opened it in Barcelona in 2005, there was only one other chil­dren’s book­shop, Al·lots. We started on Car­rer Santa Eugènia and after five years, in 2010, we moved to where we are now.
In 2015 you ran into prob­lems keep­ing the book­shop on this street.
The owner of the block sold the whole build­ing and the ten­ants had to leave. We had a 10-year con­tract, until 2020, and we made it clear to the new owner that we didn’t want to leave. We fought it and started the Jo no marxo (I’m not leav­ing) cam­paign, which spread like wild­fire.
He wouldn’t let you do work­shops in the out­door court­yard.
No one should ques­tion whether a cul­tural event can take place in­side a book­shop. We made a lot of noise and he backed down and there was no court case. He never thought that there would be such a big re­ac­tion.
And last year the only op­tion he gave you was to buy the place.
He first asked us for a lot of money. I guess the pan­demic worked in our favour and in the end it was rel­a­tively easy. We ad­justed to re­al­ity. Still, try­ing to get the money was not easy. The busi­ness works and is doing well but I didn’t have that much money saved. The pro­ject was funded by Tri­o­dos Bank, and the busi­ness being vi­able and the fact that it was a cul­tural and so­cial pro­ject helped us. We wanted to fight for this place, be­cause this is our neigh­bour­hood and be­cause we may not have found an­other place with the beau­ti­ful out­door court­yard we have here.
How did the idea of seek­ing fi­nan­cial sup­port through il­lus­tra­tions come about?
We’re very much linked to the world of il­lus­tra­tion. We’ve been deal­ing with il­lus­tra­tors for many years and I know many of them. Three peo­ple closely linked to Casa Anita, aware that we would not have enough money, of­fered to do­nate il­lus­tra­tions. Peo­ple had en­cour­aged us to crowd­fund, but as it was to buy premises I didn’t feel happy about ask­ing for money. This was a dif­fer­ent op­tion. Peo­ple were buy­ing some­thing that has value.
In the end did you feel lib­er­ated and vin­di­cated?
Deep down I knew I’d stay. There was no other way. Many peo­ple said I’d earned it. It was also com­pli­cated by how this city is. Barcelona doesn’t help much. A book­shop or any busi­ness needs to have some sta­bil­ity.
How has the pan­demic af­fected the book­shop?
I think the small­est and most in­de­pen­dent book­stores are the ones that have come out best. Last year, we were able to open on May 4. And peo­ple re­sponded by buy­ing what they could. There’s been a lot of sol­i­dar­ity in the city’s local neigh­bour­hoods.

book­shops

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