On an academic trip to Chile, poets from a congress staying at the same hotel as José Daniel Barquero invited him to wine, cheese and to recite. That evening he met Judge Guzmán, who prosecuted Pinochet, and the son of a friend of Pablo Neruda. Now Barquero has seven hundred books by Neruda and a collection of unpublished manuscripts by him, and also by García Lorca. They are in a gray folder, in a cabinet with camphor balls to protect them from the little silver fish that collectors hate so much. Between the pages, sheets of papyrus prevent the paper’s acids from absorbing the ink.
There are other documents: a text that Freud addressed to his nephew, a letter from Einstein, another that his friend Camilo José Cela sent to Barquero. A reading point that Neruda dedicated to Cortázar, as always in green ink; a few words for his “cherido García Márquez y sus Cien años de soledad”, or a poem to Salvador Allende. “After the coup d’état, if you were found with a book by Neruda, you were in trouble, that’s why, in the dictatorship, people tore off the dedication and threw the book away”. Among other jewels, it has Canciones (1921-1924) dedicated by Lorca to Neruda, and a “Recuerdo de Federico” signed by the Chilean poet.
Books are his greatest treasure. He is able to rescue them from the street while walking three jack russells. He spends hours rummaging through bookstores as an old man. Perhaps it’s a passion inherited from his father, who always remembers with a book, or from his 82-year-old mother, “a stoned superreader”. First you see them, then you stop, one day you take one. And over time “the selfishness of possession makes you buy more than you can read”. In the five libraries – between Madrid, Barcelona, ??London and Moià (the largest) – it has about fifteen hundred books on public relations since 1923, including those of Edward Bernays, founder of the profession and with whom worked in the United States. Also an architecture and design collection of almost three thousand books and another on painting; is an administrator of the Thyssen group.
It is part of the Association of Bibliophiles of Barcelona, ??”one of the most important in Europe and with the most experts”, the oldest active in Spain, and which has brought together the Duke of Alba, bookbinders such as Palomino and Brugalla , Néstor Luján, Martí de Riquer, names such as Güell, Godó, March, Gili, Carulla, Masaveu, Gay, Mateu, Ybarra, García Nieto, Ferrer, and in which Madrid is present in partners such as Herrero de Miñón, the count of Orgaz, Santiago Saavedra, Susana Bardón or Barquero himself.
He even collects cacti and polychrome wood carvings. In the living room, he has an encyclopedia that he paid for seventeen years with all the species of birds. In front are framed photos of her with the King Emeritus and Philip VI. Around the sofa, the medals of the academic and scientific world. And, on the table, a book about eggs from around the world. “Who would think of making a book like that? If you see it, you have to buy it.” Next, another about which watch was worn with each outfit in each era for 500 years.
As a child, in addition to the adventures of Los cinco, he devoured encyclopedias of animals such as that of Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, which he bought by the bundle at the kiosk with his savings. Even then he was a collector. From insects and butterflies it went to stamps and then to coins and pocket watches. He says that you feel attracted to an object, you fall deeply in love with it. And you want to know everything, buy watchmakers’ dictionaries. Until finally you create the International Museum of High Watchmaking in Butxaca, which makes you collect books on how to teach children the time. He has written more than half a hundred, such as Los relojes del Congreso de los Deputados or the catalog of all the clocks of the Ministry of Labor and Social Economy. Or Torre Sevilla, for which so much was documented about skyscrapers that in the movies cities are recognized by the skyline.
