I recently returned from a trip to Spain. Among other places, I went to Valencia. It was during my semi-drunken wanderings there that I saw this bookstore and met its owner. The store was delightfully unorganized and smelled absolutely wonderful. The man eyed me somewhat distrustfully and actually discouraged me from looking around. I asked him if he had any books on economics. He replied he only had books on art, poetry and philosophy, and perhaps I should go to another bookstore. I suggested that economics is very much like a philosophy. He warmed to that, and we began to chat. I told him how important his store was in the face of Valencia's "Disney-fication", and he let me know he was closing in two months. No one wanted to buy books anymore.
We talked for a good while, though I didn't understand everything he said in his mixture of Spanish and Catalan. He told me a bit about life during Franco's regime and mentioned JFK's name a few times. He repeated "freedom's not the same then as it is now" a few times as he recalled the past. I was sorry I couldn't buy an armload of books from him on the spot.
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