Where journeys begin

It came out of a friend­ship be­tween two friends, Pep Bernadas and Al­bert Padrol, who were study­ing at uni­ver­sity in 1979. They both liked to travel and were in­ter­ested in going be­yond mere tourism. Get­ting to know other cul­tures, learn­ing about dif­fer­ent points of view, and going from lit­er­a­ture to bib­li­og­ra­phy to get to know other ter­ri­to­ries and other cul­tures. At that time, there weren’t the tech­no­log­i­cal tools we have now, and many peo­ple would ask them: “I’m going to such and such a place... what do you rec­om­mend?” The shop was also a meet­ing point. With this in­ten­tion, they began with a small col­lec­tion of books from their trav­els and cre­ated a small book­shop on car­rer Riera Alta, in the Raval neigh­bour­hood, where there was a space with a cof­fee maker and a teapot. At the same time they ex­panded the bib­li­og­ra­phy by spe­cial­is­ing in travel, world cul­tures, works from other places, maps, and other types of prac­ti­cal ma­te­r­ial.

They then got an­other place on Car­rer Balmes. Not only did the op­por­tu­nity arise to ex­plain the world through land travel, but they joined forces with Force 6, which was a nau­ti­cal book­store, with the in­ten­tion of en­com­pass­ing all types of travel. Force 6 dis­ap­peared after its owner died. This venue was in­au­gu­rated 20 years ago, and Altaïr has be­come an open door to the world, so that all those peo­ple who want to travel, ei­ther phys­i­cally or from their sofas, can find ma­te­r­ial from other places and from other cul­tures. Yet, there are still a lot of things we also don’t know about, and from peo­ple ask­ing us ques­tions, we ex­pand the bib­li­og­ra­phy with a de­sire to be this com­mon thread and to cre­ate this space for cul­tural ex­change.

The travel agency was set up in 1992, propos­ing trips with a lit­tle more cul­tural aware­ness and em­pha­sis­ing that the most im­por­tant thing is not only leisure but also get­ting to know the ter­ri­tory you’re going to. We try to find peo­ple with a net­work of con­tacts who can ex­plain the place to us from dif­fer­ent an­gles.

It’s dif­fi­cult. We don’t know if we’ll sur­vive. When you have a pro­ject, you fight for it. We’re try­ing to build on the fact that we were known be­fore as the place where the first step in start­ing a jour­ney be­gins, that we are the start­ing point of a jour­ney. Altaïr is where the jour­ney be­gins, but not only do we try to be that, but we’re also try­ing to turn our­selves into a space to find out more. In the end, fic­tion that hap­pens in Afghanistan still pro­vides a view of Afghanistan. In this last year there has been a great deal of in­ter­est in moun­tain travel. For ex­am­ple, many peo­ple have shown in­ter­est in places like Ribes de Freser or even Collserola, which is right next to us. They have saved us. Also week­end get­aways. It’s true that the cul­tural sec­tor has been greatly harmed and we even more so be­cause we focus on the world of tourism, the world of travel. In ad­di­tion, the cen­tre of Barcelona has been a dead space be­cause here there are a lot of of­fices and peo­ple are tele­work­ing, while many shops have been closed. For years our lo­ca­tion was per­fect be­cause we were at the cen­tre of it all. But we con­tinue to bet on being a space of open cul­ture in the city of Barcelona.