“More than seven thousand books got wet in the booth”

Booksellers collecting books during the storm on Sant Jordi's day.CRISTÓBAL CASTRO (EL PAÍS)

The rain and hail storms that hit the Diada de Sant Jordi on Saturday caused significant damage to booths and books in Barcelona.

One of the worst moments of the day was the one experienced in the afternoon at the signature stand of the La Central bookstore on Passeig de Gràcia when gusts of wind devastated the installation, causing several minor injuries and the loss of abundant material.

“It is still too early to make a precise assessment, but I estimate that about seven thousand books got wet there, of which we still have to see how much we can recover,” explains Antonio Ramírez, owner of La Central and who experienced the catastrophe live. .

"Perhaps 30% will be saved, but adding the destroyed books and other material that we lost, our losses can rise to about 50,000 euros."

Ramírez considers that there will be a fortnight affected like them.

"It is difficult to give a total figure, but it can be multiplied by 15 ours."

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In some cases, the water bagged in the covers of the stands fell on the books on the tables.

“I know that some used and second-hand bookstores have suffered especially because they did not have tents to protect themselves from the rain.”

Wet books, he laments, "are very sad, a tremendous depression, you have spent months preparing a day that literally goes overboard."

The drama that Ramírez experienced on the afternoon of Sant Jordi —he was pale among the firefighters and emergency services that moved among the remains of the booths— and the material losses do not prevent him from considering that “it could have been worse” and highlighting the great show of the people in such an inauspicious Diada.

"People came back again and again, in the rain, with umbrellas, and I had never seen so many people, what would there be? A million? A million and a half?"

The bookseller makes, in fact, a positive balance "despite everything" and is confident that they may have matched the pre-pandemic sales of 2019. "It is close to what we expected, due to the good performance of the morning hours and the result of the bookstores, but of course, you have to subtract the losses”.

As for whether he has to make any reproach to the organization, he points out: "It is easy to say that there have to be more solid structures, but the installations of a single day are ephemeral by definition, and in fact the Abacus booths, which are more strong, they did not hold either.

The most affected areas, like ours, were affected by a phenomenon that could not be foreseen;

It seems that it was a wind that crept through the wide streets of the Eixample and that it took on tremendous force.

The wind was the worst, nothing like that happened in Plaça Reial because the wind didn't get in.

In the future it would be necessary to take into account the danger of these areas and perhaps to mount more solid structures, but of course, all that has a price, and it is only one day.

Should there have been a better weather forecast, as some affected have pointed out?

“In spring I think that is very difficult.

It was said that there would be storms at noon, but how many hailstorms have we seen in Barcelona like that in April? And how do you manage storms with a million and a half people in the street?

Ramírez, who describes what happened as an unpredictable "accident" on "a very crazy day", reflects that the only forward-looking option would have been to cancel, "which no one would want", or to hold Sant Jordi in a closed place -as was done in Girona—, in the Palau Sant Jordi or in the Fira, but people wanted to be in the street, and in a number like the one that comes out in Barcelona you don't put it in any closed place”.

The bookseller believes that the new model with bookstore and publishing houses located on Passeig de Gràcia is very good and probably prevented worse situations, with people gathered in smaller spaces and in a

like Rambla de Catalunya.

Another of those affected by the so-called "Sant Jordi de la pedregada" was the editor of Edhasa, president of the federation of publishers' guilds and of Cedro, Daniel Fernández, who literally had to put his shoulder to hold his booth.

"It was tremendous, then I had to dry my socks with a dryer, the final part, horrible, we endured until the last moment, others left before", he explains with the epic tone of a captain facing a gale, not in vain publishes the novels Navy by Patrick O'Brian.

"There were people who came to help us hold the awning supports, which we were holding on to like the crew of the

but the truth is that most of us were filming videos of us," he deplores.

“We have lost quite a few books, in the end we gave away a wet pile, 'take them and put them in the sun' we told those who came to our stand.

Books have more lives than cats.

The hard covers, of which we have many in Edhasa, last longer, but we will have completely lost more than a hundred, and in paperback and other editions about three hundred.

The worst was the wind.

The bursts took even one of our banners, which we could not recover, so we can say as in adventure novels, that we have lost the flag.

We had plastic in anticipation to cover the tables, but the water seeped everywhere.

The feeling is that disaster was in neighborhoods.

Areas of the fair where more and less were suffered”.

Daniel Fernández emphasizes that “in the face of the catastrophe, we must be supportive and be with those who have suffered the most”, but warns that it would not be fair if only the booksellers were helped for the losses and the publishers were not thought of.

"The loss will be great," he predicted.

Fernández agrees with Ramírez that the behavior of the people was amazing, "it was raining and they kept walking and buying."

He remembers that “the morning started in a great way, the dataphones were fuming, until 1 pm it was a party, everyone wanted to be out on the street, to move and Sant Jordi, they took to the streets like they had never seen before.

But in the end what seemed like the taking of the Winter Palace was the victory of General Winter.

People didn't give up even with the second hailstorm, but you couldn't fight that.

We all got soaked."

For the anecdote, the lady who in the middle of the darkness of the storm asked what a writer with sunglasses was doing taking refuge in the signature booth.

It was José Soto Chica, who is blind.

As for the possibility of having foreseen the situation, the editor points out that the reports gave showers.

“The mixture of sun and showers is something we are used to in Sant Jordi, now, not hailstorms.

Ruixats are not

.

For the violence of the phenomenon there was no warning.

The one that fell at 1:00 p.m. was brutal, but after 15 minutes the street had dried up, the second time…, in short, we had always thought that Sant Jordi would watch over”.

To Fernández, the Passeig de Gràcia formula also seems a success, since he considers that the previous mix of the book sector, "true publishers and booksellers", with others was "discriminatory" for them.

“Despite everything, it seems to me to be a positive Sant Jordi”, he sums up;

“including that we have survived.

We still don't know how it went, there was a time when the dataphone was even disconnected, but I think the sales figure will be good, like 2019 for sure.

It is true that in the morning it seemed that it was going to be extraordinary.

The truth is that on Friday and the whole week it sold very well in the bookstore.

I don't think it was a bad Sant Jordi at all”.

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