Going down Via Laietana from Plaça Urquinaona is quite a challenge. A kind of gymnasium dodging bars with the streets raised by the reform works. With a large open ditch 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. This is the stationery Hija de J. Batlle Horta, historical witness of the city and which gave identity to a street, saving the distances, considered as one of the most New York in the Catalan capital. In fact, it was installed when this avenue was opened at the beginning of the 20th century, one of the great transformations of Barcelona, ​​which lasted almost half a century with the demolition of almost three hundred buildings and more of two thousand families were forced to look for a new home.
La Rosa, the grandmother of the current owner of the business, 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, which had been opened a few years earlier in the nearby Calle Sant Pere Més Baix. It all started with Isabel’s great-grandfather, Joan Batlle Horta, from Ullà , a town in Empordà . He started working as an accountant in a company dedicated to the binding of books of which he later became the owner. “Then, his daughter, my grandmother, when Via Laietana began to open, she had the vision that it would be an important street, and decided to move the business there”, remembers Isabel, who on June 30 will definitely the shutter for 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 to private detectives. During the post-war period, the store also focused on stationery. After his grandmother, an uncle took charge of the place; then, Isabel’s mother, and currently, she, the fifth family generation at the head of the establishment, with her husband, Josep. There will be no relief because their children have taken up other professions. One is a computer engineer, and the other, a cook. However, Isabel, the owner of the establishment, intends 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 much designed for tourists. The neighbors tell me not to set up a tourist business there. It’s what I would like too”, he says. At the moment, he has rejected different offers, such as a cannabis shop, a souvenir shop, a money exchange or a 24-hour supermarket. In the absence of closing an agreement, there is on the table a proposal for a trade that would be more in line with what Isabel is looking for.
For her these days the feelings are opposite: “On the one hand, very happy to retire because I have done something that I really liked. On the other hand, sadness because you are closing a business that has been in your family’s life and the treatment with customers has been very familiar”. Looking at the window, she explains that her mother told her that when she was a child she had once left it there while she served customers. A trade that will be added to the sad list of the city’s missing, such as the recent Casa Gallofré haberdashery, the Montsant Farm or the Brusi bar. Barcelona is losing its identity a little more.
