On June 30, the Llorens Llibres shutter, a historic bookstore located in the center of Vilanova i la Geltrú, will close. With 52 years of experience, the establishment, a family tradition, reaches its final point due to the retirement of its owner and the lack of generational prominence.
The person in charge of the bookstore, Rosana Lluch, reports that she recently turned 65 and that she has made the decision to close given the pressure that she has endured in recent years. “The stress of satisfying the immediacy demanded by clients, who want the book now, is too great,” she points out. In addition, she stresses that “it was necessary to finish.” Lluch receives these days constant visits from clients who show her understanding and sadness for the end of an emblematic business.
Llorens Llibres was opened by Llorenç Lluch in 1971 on Calle de los Caputxins in Vilanova, one of the city’s commercial arteries. His five sons and daughters helped him in a way that combined with his university studies, while in 1988 one of them, Rosana Lluch, fully integrated into the day-to-day business, coinciding with a reform for expansion and the first computerization process. Since then she has been the visible face of the bookstore and defines herself as “passionate” about reading.
As regards the name of the establishment, he details that his mother’s intention was for it to be known as “Cal Llorenç”, in reference to the name of the father of the family, but this ran into several people who did not know how to pronounce it correctly and so called Cal Llorenc. “At the end of the Franco regime, the use of Catalan was very scarce,” explains Rosana Lluch. Faced with this situation, she says that her mother preferred to change the ‘ç’ to the ‘s’, so that everyone could pronounce “Llorens”. “
Lluch has been at the head of the business for 35 years, where “every day” he has made recommendations to customers, both the most loyal and the sporadic ones. She claims that her work “cannot be done by anyone” because it requires very specific knowledge and background, which have allowed her to become a “reference” bookseller for many clients.
He explains that the decision to lower the blind has been complicated but necessary. “There are many hours six days a week, and now it seems that health is suffering,” she says, assuring that the bookstore has “rewarded her a lot” for all the dedication she has put into it. “But I need to stop and do other things that I can never do,” she adds.
Stress has been the main cause of health that has led him to decide to retire, “because there is a lot of pressure to do well and bring the book to the customer as soon as possible, while other companies attack us by changing consumer habits.” He laments that “the client has become demanding to have things as soon as possible and that triggers a stronger work rhythm.”
With June 30 on the horizon as the closing date, he admits that he can’t sleep on many nights and that he feels “mixed emotions”. The most positive, the customers. Many say they “will miss the bookstore, but they also understand the decision.” “That is the most beautiful thing that can be, because we have limited ourselves to having a business that is both culture and that has ended up being more than a job”, she highlights.
Of these 52 years of business, he guarantees that the trajectory has been upward, although he assures that the covid pandemic “hit” them in March 2020. The uncertainty led them to sell some black market books “because it was when people most I needed to read it” and points out that little by little sales through the web increased.
As regards the history of the bookselling sector, Lluch celebrates that “it has evolved a lot”. From putting the price by hand on the first pages, to making some manual figures, to creating matrices that allow them to control which books have been sold. A journey that led her to go a step further and place barcode readers at different points in the bookstore so that customers could check the prices of the books.
Asked about the state of reading consumption, she assures that literature in Catalan is going through a good moment among children and young people, although she regrets that there are various works for adolescents of which there is only a Spanish version. “And the girls ask for it in Catalan because, in general, it is the language with which they feel most comfortable,” she points out.
Already in the adult strips, he criticizes that many readers end up losing the habit “because they are only moved by immediacy, which is the big problem at the moment.” Lluch questions that part of society expresses that they do not have time to read “while they are registered on four streaming platforms and they do not lose detail on social networks.”
Those who do find the time to enjoy reading show that Llorens Llibres is in high esteem these days, with a constant trickle of customers who want to buy one last novel before closing. On the night of June 30, Lluch plans to meet the most loyal customers in a small farewell when he has lowered the blind for the last time. He does not rule out that a bookseller interested in negotiating a feasible transfer may appear at the last minute, but warns that he has already received many proposals “and none ends up being real to guarantee the continuity of the business in the long term.”
