Alicia Bardon

 

Times have changed since my grandfather founded Librería Bardón in Madrid in 1947. Nowadays our beautiful shop in Plaza de San Martín  next to the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales is mentioned in travel guides, and appears in ‘selfies’ of tourists from around the world. In my father’s time, he wouldn’t open the door to anyone wearing short trousers. My father ran the business for more than 60 years, and I first began helping in the shop when I was a teenager. I didn’t realise that it would be my future, but I enjoyed spending time with my father to whom I was very close. As the father of seven children, I’m sure the peace and quiet of the bookshop was a refuge for him. He certainly spent most of his time there, and I would join him on Saturday mornings.   

At that stage my ambition was to go to law school, and to become a prosecutor. My family would make fun of me because I was always standing up for the underdog. As things turned out, I should probably have taken a degree in the history of art or literature, but university is never a waste of time. Studying law taught me to be focused, disciplined and methodical. We had to memorise an enormous amount of material, which is always a good exercise. I can still recite the Constitución Española. In fact I’m rather obsessed with national constitutions, and I have a collection on the subject.

While I was a student in Madrid, I found an internship with a law firm in the UK as I wanted to improve my English. It was in the north of England and could hardly have been more different from Spain, but I enjoyed the experience of working with a criminal barrister. I was only twenty years old, and he would let me sit in with him during interviews with his clients. I remember thinking that it was exciting and so cool! Eventually I moved back to Spain and finished my studies, but it wasn’t long before I was in London looking for work in the legal profession.

As my law degree wasn’t recognised for the purposes of qualifying as a barrister, I was faced with retraining for the Bar of England and Wales, or returning home to work for a Spanish law firm. Meanwhile a friend from Barcelona, who worked as an administrator in Christie’s book department, asked me to send in my CV. A few days later, Tom Lamb called and offered me an internship. I had heard of the great reputation of the auction house, and I couldn’t believe my luck to be working with Meg Ford, Adam Langlands, the Earl of St Andrews, and of course Tom, firstly in King Street and then in South Kensington. Although my father never tried to influence me, I knew he wasn’t very happy that I was working for Christie’s. He was a bookseller of his time, and regarded auction houses as competition.

Everything was very British about Christie’s. We had to dress in a certain way, and there was a formality and elegance that greatly impressed - and scared me. I was also scared by how much I had to learn in a short space of time. I arrived in 1996 at the same time as the Feltrinelli library, which was sold by Christie’s between 1997 and 2001. Suddenly I found myself collating incredible but difficult material, but my wonderful colleagues were always supportive, and Meg was an inspiration. Incidentally anything Spanish tended to come my way, as if I had some kind of innate knowledge!

When my contract came to an end, I was offered the opportunity to stay at Christie’s. It was a difficult decision, but in the end I returned to Madrid and entered the legal profession. After eighteen months, I realised that I wasn’t enjoying my work. My father was keen for me  to join him at Librería Bardón, but I wanted my independence, which is something that I had enjoyed since I first went to England. I haven’t followed the traditional Spanish model in many aspects of my life, and I didn’t want to become my father’s assistant. Let’s say that his attitude to women was rather old-fashioned, despite the fact that God gave him six daughters, of whom three are in the trade.

However, he always respected my independent spirit, and I was never obliged to do the conventional thing. For a while I ran my own little book business, and invoiced my father for the work that I did for him. I’ve never forgotten the first time that I sold something rather well, and my father said, ‘You’re going to be a very good bookseller’. I was so happy to hear those words, but I must say that it took a long time to be recognised for myself, and not simply as the daughter of Don Luis.  My great friend Camille Sourget had the same experience when she followed in the footsteps of her father, Patrick.

I’m full of admiration for Pom Harrington and what he has achieved for his family business. My father first met Pom at a Christie’s sale of travel books in New York. Pom was standing at the back of the room, buying all the important works of Spanish exploration - the very books for which my father had crossed the Atlantic. He was becoming quite annoyed, and turned round to look at Pom. ‘Who is that guy?’ he said to me, ‘Why’s he buying Spanish books, and why’s he so young?’ When I explained that he was Peter Harrington’s son, my father declared that Pom was the only example known to him of someone improving an antiquarian business into which they were born. I wasn’t quite sure how to take that remark.

In 2008, my father formally retired, and I took over the family business with my sister Belén. She had studied bibliography at university, and had been working for my father while I was in London. I won’t pretend it’s easy working with family, but Belén and I were very close when we were young, and I believe that we complement each other. She is relaxed and quiet, and I’m more volatile and passionate. Belén has a greater understanding and knowledge of the Spanish market but, as a mother of three children, she prefers not to travel for work, and so I’m more involved in our international business.

When people ask me what I do, there’s always a gasp of amazement that one can actually make a living selling old books. Their second question is always, ‘What’s your most expensive book?’ People are happy to spend a lot of money on property and crazy art, but they can’t understand why the first edition of The Origin of Species is expensive. It makes no difference when I try to explain that it’s a question of value rather than expenditure. Darwin’s book changed the world, which is more than can be said for their new house.

My father only dealt in antiquarian books, but I’m very interested in modern literature and the Spanish writers and poets of the Generation of ’98 and ’27. Their works are increasingly popular amongst young book collectors, who are emerging with strength. It’s an optimistic sign, and gives me hope for the future of our occupation. Another change since my father’s time is the number of young and talented women in the business. He only had one female colleague, who was based in the north of Spain, and is no longer with us. I can’t remember any other Spanish female booksellers of his generation.

Belén and I have had a tough time since our father’s death in 2019. First of all there was the pandemic, and in 2021 we had a disastrous flood in the shop, which damaged the structure of the building.  Four years later we’re still battling with the Kafkaesque bureaucracy for the permits required before any work can be done on historic buildings in the centre of Madrid. Meanwhile the shop is temporarily closed, and almost entirely filled with scaffolding. We had to move 80% of the stock out of the shop, and now one of the biggest challenges is finding anything. Surveyors come and go, but no work has actually been done. It might have been easier to find other premises but, for sentimental reasons, we decided to stay on and fight. There were times when I wanted to quit, but this is my life and it’s all that I want to do.

Now that I’m working from home, book fairs have become my shop window. They have always been important to me, and I remember persuading my father that we needed to participate in foreign fairs. My grandfather had joined the ABA in 1956, but my father was never very active on the international scene. It was partly because he didn’t speak English, but also because Spain was an inward-looking country in those days, and it was difficult to send money abroad. The Asociación Ibérica de Librerías Anticuarias, of which I’m currently the President, wasn’t founded until 1990.  My father didn’t realise the importance of maintaining an international presence, whereas I enjoy flying the flag for Spanish culture. In fact I feel a great sense of pride when I’m the only Spaniard exhibiting at a foreign book fair.

We have such a rich artistic and cultural heritage and so many world-class institutions, and yet you wouldn’t think so if you asked the man in the street. I blame the education system which, in my opinion, seems determined to neglect our heritage and values. The Biblioteca Nacional de España has an astonishing and wide-ranging collection, but perhaps one in a thousand Spaniards are aware of it. Nowadays children experience everything on a screen. I’m still excited by the book as a physical object, and the romance of holding something that was once in the hands of an early explorer, a Spanish king or Federico García Lorca. I don’t understand why my country is so neglectful of its history - there’s more to Spain than sun and fun.