Sweet Books

Girona had to wait until 2013 to have a used bookshop that it deserved. Although El Portal del Col·leccionista has a selection of old books, if what you're looking for is books and just books (first editions, uncatalogued rarities), then Sweet Books is the place to stick your nose into. The owners have been bookshop-owners before and an encyclopedic literary culture - they've managed to find books based only on what a client can tell them about the story without remembering either the title or the author - combines with a love for books as beautiful objects in their own right, a love that is even sweeter because at the bookstore you can also buy sweets. You might find a beautifully bound, 1905 edition of the complete works of Jacint Verdaguer, or a version in Catalan of 'Perot l'Escabellat' ('Shock-headed Peter) by Heinrich Hoffman with illustrations by Mercè Llimona, which went out of print decades ago. And, of course, there's also the emotion of discovering a rarity on a side shelf. A whole adventure awaits without having to leave the Barri Vell.