Temples of the book

Jorge Luis Borges wrote: “I al­ways imag­ined that par­adise would be some kind of li­brary.” The poet imag­ined heaven as an oasis of peace in which the en­joy­ment of books could trans­port the reader to an­other di­men­sion. Cat­alo­nia boasts a num­ber of par­adises like that imag­ined by Borges, such as the Li­brary of Cat­alo­nia, where it is easy to lose track of time in its huge Gothic rooms, or the Arús Li­brary, an in­sti­tu­tion born of work­ing-class cul­ture and the legacy left by the jour­nal­ist and play­wright Rossend Arús, or even the rel­a­tively new li­brary ded­i­cated to Gabriel García Márquez, which was re­cently recog­nised as the world’s best pub­lic li­brary. They are in­sti­tu­tions that in re­cent years have made a major leap for­ward in terms of the range of ser­vices they offer and that go far be­yond sim­ply pre­serv­ing books on shelves. Pub­lic li­braries are to be found in every cor­ner of the coun­try, but there are also some that are pri­vately owned, per­haps less well-known and less ac­ces­si­ble, but which have long (and often tur­bu­lent) his­to­ries linked to the strug­gle to pre­serve the coun­try’s bib­li­o­graphic her­itage while also con­serv­ing items and col­lec­tions of great his­tor­i­cal value.

Some of these book tem­ples were built thanks to the ef­forts of or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Reus Read­ing Cen­tre (1859) or the Uni­ver­sity of Barcelona (1872) and they have be­come land­mark in­sti­tu­tions with a vo­ca­tion for pub­lic ser­vice. Oth­ers are part of the Church’s con­tri­bu­tion to the coun­try’s cul­ture, such as the Li­brary of Montser­rat and the Sem­i­nary of Tar­rag­ona’s li­brary. Some are the legacy left by em­i­nent col­lec­tors, such as Per­al­ada Cas­tle’s li­brary, which be­came the life’s work of busi­ness­man and politi­cian Miquel Mateu and which houses the world’s most im­por­tant Cer­vantes col­lec­tion. It is also worth high­light­ing the Li­brary of the Bar As­so­ci­a­tion, which boasts al­most two cen­turies of his­tory and which is a global point of ref­er­ence on legal top­ics.

When talk­ing about these in­sti­tu­tions, it is not only their col­lec­tions that de­serve at­ten­tion but also the build­ings that house them, such as the Li­brary of the Ateneu Barcelonès, whose mod­ernist ar­chi­tec­ture by Josep Maria Jujol is gen­uinely stun­ning.

Some of these li­braries have been des­e­crated on sev­eral oc­ca­sions, vic­tims of in­tol­er­ance and fa­nati­cism, es­pe­cially at the time of the Span­ish Civil War. Such is the case of the Ateneu Barcelonès, whose li­brary was purged in 1939 after the Fran­coist vic­tory, mean­ing that more than 15,000 vol­umes were kept from the pub­lic for the next four decades. As for the Reus Read­ing Cen­tre, it re­mained closed until 1948, when pub­lic pres­sure forced its re­open­ing. How­ever, the Li­brary of Montser­rat man­aged to save its bib­li­o­graphic her­itage thanks to the in­ter­ven­tion of the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment. The Li­brary of the Bar As­so­ci­a­tion man­aged to sur­vive the rev­o­lu­tion­ary fer­vour, in part be­cause the lawyers it rep­re­sented were from across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum and the Fran­coist po­lice were never al­lowed to enter.

In this re­port, we in­vite you to visit six of these li­braries and learn about their trea­sures from the li­brar­i­ans who cu­rate them.

fea­ture Cul­ture and her­itage