Libraría Couceiro Celebrates its Fifth Anniversary in Cervantes

12 years ago

These are not good times for culture and less for the publishing sector but the Couceiro bookshop has been challenging the market and offering much more than books for 43 years: a way of life in which business and culture share a space which has just celebrated its fifth anniversary.

Libraría Couceiro celebrated its fifth anniversary in Cervantes on 24 July

In 1969, Xesús Couceiro opened the first Libraría Couceiro in San Pedro Street. Since then, four more Bookshops were opened in the city, a growing business which became a benchmark up to arrive at its current location: the emblematic Cervantes Square.

The building of the current bookshop has five floors and 500 square metres, it is headed by Pablo and María Couceiro, the second generation of booksellers who keep the spirit of the original business: to promote Galician literature and culture.

Hence, two of the five floors are dedicated to Galician and bargain books, one of the main attractions of this cultural space where the environment invites to relax, to calmly rummage around, and to discover some of the treasures hidden in its bookshelves which on Saturdays, weather permitting, go out to the street to be much more closer to neighbours, tourists, and pilgrims who are walking around Cervantes.

Sometimes, Compostela’s citizens invade the bookshop to make presentations, conferences, or meetings in an environment which has a really special meaning. Because Libraría Couceiro is much more than a business, it is a meeting and collaboration point where it is even possible to learn the publishing process.

Its bookbinding workshop receives a lot of visits from those interested on seeing how publishing is made as well as to visit the bookshop. Last 24 July it celebrated its fifth anniversary in Cervantes Square, a path which Pablo Couceiro defines as ‘difficult’ but ‘positive’, as despite of the crisis and constant cuts on culture and education ‘sectors which directly affect bookshops’ they managed to ‘grow step by step.’

More than Four Decades Devoted to Galician Literature and Culture

This year, Xesus Couceiro was awarded the Prize Francisco Fernández del Riego in recognition to his constant and continuous work for more than four decades, the prize is annually awarded by the Asociación Gallega de Editores for ‘A whole life devoted to the promotion of Galician books and culture’.

And also for his constant support to the sector, as founder and first chairman of the Federación de Libreros de Galicia and co-founder of Edicións Laiovento; he also enhance Edicións do Cerne as he published facsimiles reproductions of free of copyrights first editions of Galician authors. A whole life devoted to Galician books and culture which the second generation is currently continuing with the same devotion and love.