From Gala to 'Sapiens' What we read, what we read
Those in charge of the Madrid Book Fair will work this week with the City Council of the capital to design reliefs and new circulation schemes that alleviate their premises, after the first weekend of
saturation
.
Professionals from the publishing business have recognized the sensation of chaos that was experienced in the Retiro Park, where the influx of the public has exceeded expectations.
What does chaos mean? Tails, especially.
Queues at the two entrances to the venue
and, even more, queues at the stands where prominent authors signed copies. There have been waits of up to
90 minutes
, there have been readers who arrived early but left without a signature because there was no margin and, above all, there were space problems. The accumulation of people around the
graceful
stalls
was so disproportionate that it became a
human barrier
that prevented other visitors from reaching the rest of the Fair.
"I see that the sector has relied on the signing sessions to give an incentive to an audience that we did not know if they were going to return, it has been our way of throwing in the rest. The first weekend has been full of first-rate signatures. level and there may have been the sensation of saturation ", explains Sergio Bang, from
the Muga bookstore in Madrid
.
His colleague Igor Muñiz,
Grant's bookseller
,
paints
a similar portrait: the fair suffers from success.
"If Fernando Aramburu's signatures create a 150-meter queue parallel to the
stands
, the consequence is that there are 40 covered stalls, which are not reached by visitors."
The conclusion is that the Fair, with the expected full capacity (3,900 people maximum), has worked well for some and badly for others, depending on how the queue fell. "Our Friday was the best sale we have had in 20 years at the Book Fair," explains Muñiz. "On the other hand, Saturday and Sunday have worked like a good weekday. We had signed signatures from Luis Landero and Lorenzo Silva, from two authors who we know what they sign because we have worked with them for other years ... And we will have sold
60% of what would have been normal
. "
"It is a different fair than the ones we have known so far: the venue is closed, the time of year is different and there are sanitary and technical restrictions that I, personally, do not know well," says Bang. "I can think of a solution: take the queues for the signatures
outside the Paseo de Coches
, in parallel, so that they do not interrupt the circulation. But I don't know if it is possible, if it goes beyond the contract of the Fair with the Town Hall ", adds Muñiz.
That is another fight, almost historical: the Book Fair is a
half commercial, half cultural, half popular event
, "different from any other fair," according to representatives of the union.
The municipal government, they explain, has not always understood this singularity well.
It was not that long ago: once, his technicians thought of taking the books
to the Casa de Campo
.
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