• Echoes of verbena (IX) The oldest bookstore in Madrid closes

In December of last year, the Pérgamo bookstore announced its closure.

Its owners, the sisters Lourdes (80 years old) and Ana Serrano (72), who had run their parents' business, open since 1946, were retiring.

In addition, the decrease in sales had fallen significantly due to electronic commerce and the project was becoming increasingly unfeasible.

On January 5 they closed, or so they thought, definitively.

However,

the Pérgamo bookstore will open its doors again in the coming months

.

Providentially, one day before the closing, a man interested in the business appeared.

He was a businessman who had lived in the area as a child and refused to let the store close.

After speaking with one of the owners, with Ana, he went to the real estate agent in charge of renting the premises to process the transfer.

On April 19 they will sign a rental contract

thanks to which the new owner will be able to reopen this temple of books:

"We have been very lucky, as if Santa Claus, the Three Wise Men, had come, as if we had touched the Fat »

, assures Ana Serrano, happy that the bookstore can remain open.

"This is what I wanted and I didn't dare to dream

," says the bookseller, while acknowledging that numerous neighbors, when they found out that they were going to close, "wept and said that this was like a wake" for what had meaning this establishment in the course of their lives.

Ana was opposed from the first moment to the establishment being used for other activities, but

no one who wanted to continue with the Pergamon legacy appeared either

: "Many agencies have come offering to manage the rental of the property, but I told them that I moment I wanted to rent it for a bookstore, not to open a restaurant," he acknowledges.

However, at the beginning of January, "a man came in who said that when he was a child he bought all his books here, that he was fed up with all the stores of his childhood being removed.

He did not ask anything, neither the meters of the premises, nor the price

", says the still owner of the store, while admitting to being "perplexed" by what happened.

Pérgamo is the oldest bookstore in Madrid

and is located in the Salamanca district, on Calle General Oraá, number 24. These days, while it is time to change owners, Ana is still in the store and restores the furniture to leave everything ready for the new owner: "I'm cleaning the wood, polishing it and varnishing it".

The history of this bookstore is linked to the Serrano family

.

The father of Ana and Lourdes, Raúl Serrano Guillén, professor of Law during the Franco regime, and his wife, founded Pérgamo more than seven decades ago with the financial help of a married couple.

Over the years, her daughters picked up the baton and took over the business: "

This bookstore is my parents and for it to close is a pain, it's horrible, I was more sorry to end it than my house"

, confesses Ana. At the moment, Pérgamo resists and will remain open for all those people from Madrid who love good literature.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more