Woven into the cultural fabric

La Capona began with a cri­sis in an­other book­shop in Tar­rag­ona, where I worked with the other two part­ners in this busi­ness: Pau and Ri­card Es­pinosa. It opened in 1997 with the idea of start­ing a new and dif­fer­ent book­shop. And now we have ac­cu­mu­lated some 24 years of his­tory.

Yes, it has worked out for us.

The book­store trade has an added flavour: the fact that we are in­te­grated into the city’s cul­tural net­work. It is sat­is­fy­ing to col­lab­o­rate with var­i­ous ini­tia­tives, from dis­trib­ut­ing sol­i­dar­ity cal­en­dars to sell­ing tick­ets for events. Of course, this opens the door for us to sell books, but it also means being part of the local cul­tural fab­ric.

When we started we were, if not the first, at least the sec­ond book­shop to im­ple­ment some­thing that sur­prised peo­ple: we didn’t put prices on the books but in­stead in­stalled a sys­tem of bar­code read­ers. This sys­tem has since been in­stalled every­where. Also, along with other book­shops, we started ex­per­i­ment­ing with a man­age­ment soft­ware called Galatea. Be­cause of the amount of books that we get every day. With­out the sup­port of these pro­grams, it would be im­pos­si­ble to ab­sorb every­thing. Seen from the out­side, the man­age­ment of a book­shop has an aura of ro­mance, but in­side it is hard work, al­though it is also com­pelling. To give you an ex­am­ple, if you were to have walked into a book­shop in 1990, you would have seen peo­ple work­ing there, and if you walk into the same book­shop today, you’ll often find the same peo­ple.

Yes. You see the same peo­ple, not just the own­ers but also the em­ploy­ees. If one book­shop folds, the em­ploy­ees often end up open­ing an­other one. This sets us apart from the rest of the re­tail sec­tor. In ad­di­tion, it’s a self-train­ing job, and you need at least four or five years ex­pe­ri­ence be­fore you can serve be­hind the counter.

With some un­cer­tainty. We live from day to day. We all had to be in­ven­tive. For ex­am­ple, the Open Book­stores ini­tia­tive made us vis­i­ble, and I think at that time there were a lot of peo­ple who had only just dis­cov­ered book­shops! And sell­ing on­line has also worked for us.

They’ve in­creased. Since we re­opened the shop in May, book sales have gone up com­pared to 2019. For now, this trend seems to be con­tin­u­ing.

I see it more as a com­ple­ment. To buy books on­line you need to know very well what you’re look­ing to buy. And that kills what I was say­ing about the aura of ro­mance. I’d be dis­ap­pointed if on­line shop­ping be­came more pop­u­lar than peo­ple com­ing to book­shops.