The Abadía bookstore closes after three decades and seeks readers for more than twenty thousand books

"I would make a good Count of Monte Cristo," explains Francisco Soler: "I could be in a cell, pondering over my things." A fitting comparison for a ... bookseller who has handled over 300,000 second-hand books in 31 years, and who is now facing retirement. "I turn 67 in May, but I could retire this month," although Soler acknowledges that resting his mind is not in his plans: "I've been getting up at seven in the morning since I was six years old, a hard habit to break."

It won't be to open the door of the Abadía bookstore, which he founded in 2000 on Comedias street and moved in 2015 to its current location at 9 Tejón y Rodríguez street. A few months ago, Soler decided to liquidate all his stock, about 35,000 volumes, with a 75 percent discount, or in other words: if you buy 40 euros worth, you only pay 10. He says that with this reduction, he has already sold a third of the total. "People come even with shopping carts, sometimes we have to close the door because suddenly 20 people come in, they don't fit." And indeed, entering the bookstore could be likened, space-wise, to entering a cell in the Château d'If. Books and comics are piled up on shelves from floor to ceiling, under the watchful eye of a large Florentine-style rose window, featuring an image of the Virgin cradling Jesus, flanked by two angels. In this particular abbey, you can find anything from a 1939 edition of Jardiel Poncela's theater to El Coyote comics, through the complete works of Blasco Ibáñez or Anatole France, detective novels with faded pages by Mickey Spillane and Dashiell Hammett, or 'Memorial de la vida cristiana', by Fray Luis de Granada, dated 1649. Because Soler has sold almost everything: "manuscripts, letters patent, first editions by Machado, Lorca, 'Mein Kampf', the Communist Manifesto, books by Lenin..."

But long before the discount, the rose window, and the bookstore, Soler, raised in the El Palo neighborhood, was a young graduate in Hispanic Philology with a large library. "Since I was a child I liked books, paper in general, books, magazines, cut-outs, anything made of paper. I was very much a reader and a collector. And when I started my degree, the hobby took off." He admits that, with the money he earned from tutoring, "he spent more than he should have," and that his mother even opened an account for him at the Ágora bookstore, located on Trinidad Grund.

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"The problem was when I saw that the professional path was teaching. I tried it and didn't like it. I simply wasn't cut out for it." It was then, "without income and without a future" in his own words, when he made the hardest decision of his life: to sell his books. "In '95 I registered as a professional bookseller from my home. I made a very orderly postal catalog with an Amstrad computer," recounts Soler, who admits that selling his books, at first, "was traumatic" until the business started to go very well. "I thought it was going to be a failure, but I had many contacts with collectors. I began to reinvest and suddenly had many more books. The house was overwhelmed."

At its peak, Abadía had a catalog of 70,000 volumes and a space dedicated to second-hand comics

The solution was to set up the Abadía bookstore, which at its peak had a catalog of 70,000 volumes, with a significant space dedicated to second-hand comics. "I've always liked them. In fact, I wrote a thesis on the language of comics. I was very attracted to the coexistence of image and word." Soler treasures some plates from 'Cosas de Pepín', 'Máscara Negra', and the magazine 'Farolito', Malaga comics from the 50s in perfect condition, which are also for sale.

Used to selling books, Soler acknowledges that sometimes it's not easy to close this chapter of his career. "There are days when I get nostalgic," and he gets emotional remembering lifelong customers, like José Manuel, whom he hasn't seen in a while, "every book he bought was a smile"; or that author to whom he sold his own book, which he thought was already out of print and lost.