Guillem Terribas

Lli­bre­ria 22 is an in­sti­tu­tion in Girona and needs lit­tle in­tro­duc­tion. Ex­tremely ac­tive and highly in­flu­en­tial, it cel­e­brated 40 years last year, and we in­vited Guillem Ter­ribas, owner and founder of the fa­mous book­shop, to share with us his most highly-re­garded books, and the es­sen­tial el­e­ments in a life de­voted to read­ing.

1. Cien años de soledad, by Gabriel García Márquez. I’ve read it three times. First, when I was doing mil­i­tary ser­vice in the Sa­hara; I spent 13 months and 10 days there. Then, for 25 years, I dreamt they made me go back there due to a tech­ni­cal error. Ten years later I read it again, and liked it even more. And then again, 10 years after that. Other books that af­fected and in­flu­enced me are Joan Sales’ In­certa Glòria, Mercè Rodor­eda’s La Plaça del Dia­mant, Jaume Cabré’s Jo Con­fesso...

2. Sol­da­dos de Salam­ina, by Javier Cer­cas. I’ve known him since he was 17, pre­sent­ing his books at La 22, but which passed un­no­ticed until he came out with Sol­da­dos de Salam­ina, and we knew it was going to be a mas­sive suc­cess. Dur­ing the shoot­ing of the film I met David Trueba and Ari­adna Gil, and I got in­volved in the film quite a lot. It’s a book that has meant a lot to me and the book­shop.

3. My book, Demà serà un altre dia. I didn’t plan to write a book about my­self, but the pub­lisher started from the idea of how could a book­shop not in Barcelona man­age to bring to­gether so many au­thors and have such a good rep­u­ta­tion, and so be­come a phe­nom­e­non. I ex­plain how this hap­pened and, above all, I ex­plain who Guillem is, which is the part of the story that peo­ple liked most, I think.

4. This book­let was to cel­e­brate the book­shop’s 10th an­niver­sary in 1988. I asked Narcís Co­madira to make a book-mag­a­zine, with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of 22 au­thors. At the pre­sen­ta­tion, we had big names like Jaime Gil de Biedma, Montser­rat Roig, Josep Maria Benet i Jor­net, Nuria Pom­peia, Josep Maria Fon­alleras, Nar­cis Co­madira, and oth­ers. Get­ting all of them to­gether at La Mercè was spec­tac­u­lar. Xavier Folch asked who or­gan­ised this, who is be­hind it, Guillem? Who man­aged to get all these peo­ple to­gether? He couldn’t be­lieve that I did it all by my­self. From that mo­ment, La 22 started to be­come a point of ref­er­ence.

5. The mag­a­zine we pub­lished for the book­shop’s 40th an­niver­sary. I asked 40 au­thors to write any­thing they wanted, and also asked au­thors to tell us about the books that im­pressed them most, and we pub­lished all the win­ners of the Just Manuel Casero award.

6. Glasses. I’ve al­ways read a lot, and a time comes when you have dif­fi­cul­ties read­ing with­out them. Thanks to them I’ve been able to con­tinue read­ing .

7. The Premi Casero. Our jewel in the crown. It’s what has given us most sat­is­fac­tion. I still can’t be­lieve that 39 years later, we’re still doing it, dis­cov­er­ing new au­thors. Mar Bosch, for in­stance, win­ner in 2012, now has an es­tab­lished ca­reer.

8. My agen­das. I don’t use my phone agenda for events, I pre­fer paper. I used to have it all in my head, and would only write down the days of pre­sen­ta­tions and phone num­bers. Peo­ple have al­ways been im­por­tant to me, and I’m lucky to have a great agenda of phone num­bers, and many still call me to ask for con­tacts.