The delightful scent of books

At the end of 2021 Calonge surprised everyone by announcing the opening of seven bookstores at the same time. It was an unusual and rather courageous bet that has turned this town in the Baix Empordà into the first book town in Catalonia. A year and a half later, one store has closed, but the others remain well alive, boasting titles that fill the calendar with all kinds of activities and our souls with the best literature, essay, comic, travel, music, and culinary publications.

When I was little, there were two stationery stores in Calonge as far as I can recall. I went to get the morning paper or magazines for my parents early in the morning before breakfast then headed to the beach. Normally we went to look for books in Sant Antoni or Palamós, where the stationery stores were larger and had a wider variety of titles. As a child, I was immersed in the books of Alfred Hitchcock and the three investigators while my mother devoured all the Agatha Christie stories published by the Molino publishing house.

Forty years later, Calonge has decided to become Catalonia’s bookstore capital, a great decision for cultural tourism and a marvelous idea. Tra- ditional bookstores are changing to adapt to today’s modern times, and new bookstores offer a certain extra interest: they are meeting spaces that adda bit more value than the stationery stores of the past.

Along the main streets of this town in the Baix Empordà, children’s, comic, travel, occult, culinary, and generalist bookstores have appeared, replacing the bars or clothing stores of yesteryear. Calonge is the perfect town for anyone who still likes to find books on the shelves, with their interesting spines and precious covers, books that we take care of by dusting them off from time to time and rereading when the urge overcomes us. //