Going down Via Laietana from Plaza Urquinaona is quite a challenge. A kind of gymkhana avoiding gates with the streets raised by the reform works. With a large ditch opened on the other side of the street, with the noise of the machines and the annoying dust, another hundred-year-old store will say goodbye to the city. It is the ‘Hija de J. Batlle Horta’ stationery store, historical testimony of the city and which gave identity to a street, saving the distances, considered one of the most New York-like in the Catalan capital. In fact, it was installed when the opening of this avenue was carried out at the beginning of the 20th century, one of the great transformations of Barcelona that lasted almost half a century with the demolition of almost three hundred buildings and more than two thousand families were forced to look for a new home.
Rosa, the grandmother of the current business owner, Isabel Devant, is the one who appears on the establishment’s sign as ‘daughter’. It was she who decided to move the business to Via Laietana in 1923, inaugurated a few years ago in the nearby street of Sant Pere Més Baix. It all started with Isabel’s great-grandfather, Joan Batlle Horta, from Ullà , a town in l’Empordà . He went to work in a company as an accountant dedicated to the binding of books of which he later became the owner. “Then her daughter, my grandmother, when Via Laietana began to open, had a vision that it would be an important street and decided to move the business here,” recalls Isabel, who will definitively lower the blind on June 30 due to retirement.
They specialized in ledgers, pens, ink, and blotting paper. An essence that has reached the last days with clients in search of these record books, from hospitals, private detectives or security companies. In the postwar period, the store also turned to stationery. After her grandmother, an uncle took over the premises, then Isabel’s mother and currently she, the fifth generation of the family running the establishment with her husband Josep. There will be no relief because her children have dedicated themselves to other professions. One of them is a computer engineer and the other a cook.
Despite this, Isabel, owner of the establishment, plans to rent it out and does not want this place to become another tourist business. “This neighborhood has changed a lot. Now it is very designed for tourists. The neighbors tell me not to set up a tourist business. That is what I would like too â€, she assures. For the moment, she has rejected offers such as a cannabis store, souvenirs, a currency exchange house or a 24-hour supermarket. In the absence of closing an agreement, there is a proposal on the table for a trade that would be more in line with what Isabel is looking for.
For her, these days we feel opposite: “On the one hand, we are very happy to retire because I have done something that I really liked and I have enjoyed it. On the other hand, sadness because you are closing a business that has been your family’s whole life and dealing with customers has always been very familiarâ€. With her gaze fixed on the window, she explains that her mother told her that when she was a baby she had once left him there while she served customers. A business that will be added to the sad list of those who have disappeared from the city, such as the recent Casa Gallofré haberdashery in Eixample, Granja Montsant or the Brusi bar. Barcelona loses its identity a little more.
