Friday was the tenth anniversary of La Calders. It is an independent, medium-sized bookstore, with an abundant and well-chosen collection, located in Passage Pere Calders in Barcelona. In the open space, there are tables and bookshelves, a piano and a W on the wall. The illustrator Pau Badia painted it with a brush and red paint on August 15, 2016 or 2017 – the witnesses do not agree – between rumbas and readings around the writer Francisco Casavella. And the fact is that August 15, 1971 was the day of the Watusi in Casavella’s novel of the same name, in which there is a moment when Ws appear painted all over Barcelona.
Casavella was a friend of the group of people who started the bookstore and a neighbor of the neighborhood. And for La Calders he is her favorite writer. They always have a good pile of copies of El día del Watusi, they recommend it right and wrong, they put it on the stall for Sant Jordi and they give five cents to everyone who asks intrigued what that W painted on the wall is.
These days it is a happy coincidence that Teatre Lliure has just premiered the magnificent adaptation made by Iván Morales of El día del Watusi, as if to add to the celebration. Enric Auquer leaves his heart and soul playing the protagonist, Fernando Atienza, who starts out as a 13-year-old dwarf living in the shanties of Montjuïc and, apart from doing errands and errands, has the ability of knowing how to bridge a car.
For the celebration of the anniversary of La Calders they will wait until June, when the Sant Jordi holiday will have passed. In the midst of the success that supposes a bookshop to last ten years nowadays, Isabel Sucunza, the soul of La Calders, tells me that they are already thinking about some events they will do. One of the ideas is to repeat two activities that at the time were a failure: the presentation of Permagel, which was attended by three people (after a few days, Eva Baltasar kicked it) and a tribute to Shirley Jackson, with the editor of Minúscula Valeria Bergalli and zero assistants. They will repeat them as they were then. And if necessary, they will return in ten years.
It is in this idea of ??failure that Sucunza makes the connection with the Watusi: “Whatever we do, we will never leave the hut”. For many years of books and good times at La Calders!
