Librería Canuda and the mysterious sign

This bookshop, as we describe it here, no longer exists. It has moved to Carrer del Bruc and is now called Librería Kepos-Canuda.

Librería Canuda is a family business that has been handed down from father to son. It was founded by Ramón Mallafré Conill in 1931 and the shop is still just as it was on the day it opened. Covering more than 600 m², the bookshop holds over 100,000 volumes ready to tell us stories of every kind and from every period since the 16th century.

On Saturdays it fills up with people who are keener on having a nose around than on buying. And a sign on a mysterious door, behind a tantalising curtain, invites the most curious to step into the ‘Cementerio de libros’ (Cemetery of Books), the fictional place invented by Carlos Ruiz Zafón that features in two of his novels, ‘El juego del ángel’ (The Angel’s Game) and ‘La sombra del viento’ (The Shadow of the Wind). Novels I’d recommend reading if you like Barcelona and mysteries. Naturally, we asked about the door, and one of the shop assistants told us the sign gets people asking about the mysterious place hidden behind it, but that there’s nothing there except another room of books, reached down a narrow staircase. So down we went, and saw to our disappointment that he was right.

Even so, on the landing at the top of the stairs down, you could just make out in the darkness a wooden staircase, this time going up, leading to another room in total darkness. It must have been the space for book collectors that the assistant mentioned they keep well protected, because they have books up there that can cost as much as €4,000. This undefined, inaccessible area set my imagination racing and left a little room for doubt: perhaps the cemetery of books lay in that other direction.

Address: C/Canuda 4, 08002 Barcelona

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