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2 May 2021 2.00 h

Mariana Sarrias. BYRON LLIBRERIA,

A broad concept with space to relax

One of the latest bookstores to open in Barcelona, Byron offers a wide range of literature, events, local cuisine, exchange and reading club, and even has a fireplace

How was this new pro­ject to open a book­shop in the cen­tre of Barcelona con­ceived?
Four­teen years ago, with my part­ner, Víctor Manuel Sánchez, we opened an aca­d­e­mic and in­for­ma­tive pub­lish­ing house, Huy­gens. After many years of see­ing the mar­ket from the pub­lisher’s side, we had al­ways wanted to move to the other side and ex­pand the busi­ness with a gen­eral in­ter­est book­store. We started plan­ning it four years ago. First we looked for the place, then how to do the ren­o­va­tion, the per­mits, the money... We started the re­fur­bish­ing in No­vem­ber 2019 and wanted to open in April 2020, but the pan­demic started and we had to stop, like every­one else. The feel­ing of lone­li­ness on the streets was shock­ing. And like every­one else, we didn’t know how long it would last, just a cou­ple of weeks... It was dif­fi­cult to find the build­ing ma­te­ri­als... Every­thing got com­pli­cated, but in the end we came out the other side and opened in No­vem­ber. The first day we cried, be­cause it was very emo­tional. It’s a very per­sonal pro­ject.
Given the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, it’s cer­tainly a very brave busi­ness ven­ture...
The truth is that in this com­pli­cated sit­u­a­tion, there was also a great de­sire for good news, for cul­ture, for being able to go out, for recre­ational and cul­tural ac­tiv­i­ties... and the re­sponse and per­cep­tion have been very good. Not only in the neigh­bour­hood, which is happy to have a cul­tural es­tab­lish­ment of some size, but also in the media, and with­out hav­ing done a big cam­paign. There was in­ter­est in know­ing how we had got here. And that’s helped make us known. Peo­ple are dis­cov­er­ing us, mainly peo­ple from Barcelona, of course, be­cause there aren’t many pos­si­bil­i­ties for mov­ing around.
How has the pan­demic af­fected the ini­tial busi­ness plan?
We made some pre­dic­tions, with a busi­ness plan, but it has had to be re­done, of course. De­spite the cir­cum­stances, we’re happy with the re­cep­tion and the start, which has been good at a time when every­thing is so dif­fi­cult.
Does the Byron book­store have a con­cept?
It has a do­mes­tic focus. We wanted a quiet, peace­ful, ample space with warmth and com­fort. To be a kind of oasis in the Eix­am­ple dis­trict. The aim is also to have many re­lated ac­tiv­i­ties, from the cui­sine in the cafe­te­ria to pre­sen­ta­tions, con­fer­ences, work­shops, read­ing clubs, courses, music and ex­hi­bi­tions. We want the con­cept of a shop, but also of a dy­namic cul­tural cen­tre. Now it re­mains to be seen whether all this is sus­tain­able. We’re stream­ing small for­mat pre­sen­ta­tions, for peo­ple who can’t come here. When every­thing is back to nor­mal, the in­ten­tion is to es­tab­lish our­selves as a solid cul­tural space, of­fer­ing at­trac­tive, co­her­ent and in­ter­est­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices, also as a book­store, with a good cat­a­logue.
What types of books does Byron stock?
We are gen­eral in­ter­est, in the sense that, as far as space al­lows, we want to have a good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of al­most every­thing. It’s im­pos­si­ble to cover all sub­jects, but we want the se­lec­tion to be in­ter­est­ing. And not just new books. New pub­li­ca­tions have a very fast ro­ta­tion. If you focus only on that, you need a lot of space to allow for the next ones. We also have a se­lec­tion of back­ground books, from one, five or ten years ago.

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