ARREBATO LIBROS

When you think about your business, what are you most proud of?

To be able to open the door every day (or at least before) and to be able to spend the day doing what we love most. We miss talking to our readers, from whom we have learned everything. We are also very proud of our collection, which we have been building up over the years, and which now exceeds 12,000 titles. And of the authors we publish and being able to travel with them on festival tours, although now we also look back on this with nostalgia, with the hope and illusion that we will soon be able to do it again.

What is the history of your commerce?

Arrebato started as a fanzine in Barcelona 20 years ago, in fact this 2020 we are celebrating, interrupted now but we hope we can take it up again once this has passed. It was a fanzine in which we published 20 issues (number 20 again) and that we will now reprint in a single volume. The name is a tribute/tribute to the film that marked our adolescence, by Iván Zulueta. And since 2004 we have been established as a bookshop and publishing house in Malasaña, the neighbourhood that has seen us grow up. At the same time we created the POETAS festival, with 14 editions held in Spain and America. And from then on we gradually grew and organised a thousand poetic events; we go on tour with our poets, who always work on the stage from a special point of view, we coordinate the Contemporary Poetics cycle at the Fernán Gómez Theatre in Madrid, we have programmed days at Veranos de la Villa...

What is your professional experience?

I graduated in Psychology and because I came to Madrid just a year before finishing my degree, I couldnt specialise in clinical psychology and I had to accept a job (in fact, at that time my love for my girlfriend was much more important than my concerns as a clinical psychologist). After finishing my degree and a year of experience in personnel selection in a temporary employment agency, my girlfriend gave me the opportunity to open the bookshop and thats where it all started. I had no experience as a bookseller, publisher or cultural manager, but a lot of desire and the good fortune of having been surrounded by great people have brought us to where we are now.

How has covid 19 affected your business?

Well, although it has obviously forced us to close the doors, not only of the book sales, but also of the publishing house and events, this crisis/parón has allowed us to reinvent ourselves and grow in several lines, we are now selling in more book portals than before, we have closed an agreement to start selling our books in digital formats and in audiobooks, we have originated a new event for 2021 ...