Uruea, perched atop a hill in northwest Spain, looks out over a broad and windswept panorama of sunflower and barley fields, as well as a renowned winery. Some of the stores’ walls are constructed right into the village’s 12th-century ramparts.
Despite its rocky beauty, Uruea, like many other communities in the Spanish countryside, has battled in recent decades with an ageing and shrinking population, resulting in a population of only approximately 100 full-time residents. There is no butcher and no baker because they both retired recently. There are only nine kids in the local school.
11 book stores and 9 specialised booksellers
However, one industry has thrived in Uruea for the past decade or so books. There are 11 bookstores, including nine specialised booksellers that sell books.
“I was born in a village without a bookshop, where people were far more concerned with cultivating their land and their animals than with books,” Francisco Rodrguez, the 53-year-old mayor of Uruea, said. This transformation is strange, but it’s a source of pride for a small community to have grown into a cultural center, which now distinguishes us from the other communities in the area.
Uruea’s ambition to become a literary center when the province paid around 3 million euros ($3.3 million) to assist renovate and converting village houses into bookstores, as well as to develop an exhibition and conference center. People interested in establishing a bookstore was granted a symbolic monthly rental cost of 10 euros.
