Seville’s Booksellers Unite to Survive the Pandemic

SEVILLE’s booksellers have formed a guild of 28 shops to unite and collaborate on helping each other survive the pandemic.

The Seville and Province Booksellers Guild has 28 members so far, ranging from small shops in the suburbs and villages to vast branches in the city centre. Their goals are to form a cohesive voice to negotiate with city and provincial officials, as well as work together on promoting book sales and reading.

The guild’s president Manuel Padilla, of Libros Padilla in the centre of Seville, explains that ‘the idea arose during the pandemic when we saw that we did not have a direct dialogue with the town hall’. Previously Seville’s bookshops belonged to a broader Andalusian trade group and therefore did not have strong communication channels with the city’s government. Padilla says that the guild ‘ wants to focus on local commerce’, particularly as the busy Christmas season comes closer.

The pandemic has heaped problems on the bookselling world, as it has to all forms of physical retail. ‘What I have around me are hotels, few people live in the centre and there are no tourists which hinder sales’ says Padilla, whose shop is located in the San Vicente area of Seville.

For those looking for an Amazon alternative that is more friendly to local booksellers, the guild point to the innovative new website ‘Todos tus Libros’ (All your Books). Customers can choose from 1.1 million titles across 200 independent Spanish bookshops to buy their next pageturners with convenience while supporting a precious and struggling industry.


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Written by

Oisin Sweeney

Oisin is an Irish writer based in Seville, the sunny capital of Andalucia. After starting his working life as a bookseller, he moved into journalism and cut his teeth as a reporter at one of Ireland's biggest news websites. Since joining Euro Weekly News in November, he has enjoyed covering the latest stories from Seville, Spain and further afield - with special interests in crime, cybersecurity, and European politics. Anyone who can pronounce his name first try gets a free cerveza...

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