How Spain fell in love with books again

Even austerity can have a silver lining. An unlikely effect of the Spanish economic crisis has been a huge rise in the popularity of literature. Locals are flooding back to libraries which are kept open by volunteers.

Every evening in the heart of Granada’s working class suburb of the Zaidín, local residents nip inside their district library at the Plaza de las Palomas with one set of books, either under their arms or in shopping bags. They come out, moments later, with another batch: pretty much what you’d expect, except that this library officially closed two years ago, has no paid workers and, with the electricity cut off, operates by candlelight.

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