2023-08-26 22:06:02
Bouquinistes, booksellers set up in small stalls on the banks of the Seine River, have been part of the Parisian landscape since the 19th century. Its boxes have the same dark green color as the other icons of urban furniture in the city: the Morris columns – which announce the latest cultural shows –, the Wallace fountains with their four caryatids and the subway entrances designed by Hector Guimard. These small shops accompany the walks along the quays of the river and attract tourists and Parisians with all kinds of cultural products, from incunabula of the great French authors to souvenirs, through comics, maps, curiosities or historical covers of magazines such as Paris Match or Miroir du Cyclisme.
However, the small stalls of the bouquinistes, considered the largest open-air bookstore in the world, could disappear next summer. At least provisionally.
Last July, the Paris Police Prefecture informed them by letter that the withdrawal of their posts is “essential” to guarantee the security of the opening ceremony of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which will take place on July 26, 2024. and that, for the first time in history, it will not be held in a stadium.
The authorities rely on an article of the French Internal Security Code, which provides for a perimeter in which “the access and movement of people are regulated” to guarantee the security of a “place or event exposed to a risk of terrorist acts.” ”.
“The regulation that the Prefecture has sent us for the opening ceremony stipulates seven days to remove 600 boxes, something unimaginable,” Jérôme Callais, president of the Association Culturelle des Bouquinistes de Paris, denounced on the microphones of public radio France Info. Some 600 posts out of a total of 900 would have to be moved.
“It’s going to be a massacre: 200, 300, 400 stalls could be destroyed and they will have to be rebuilt,” he adds. Callais estimated at more than 1.5 million euros.
Actually, the concerns go beyond the ceremony. Last month, during a meeting between representatives of the City Council and booksellers, the council also informed them that during the Olympic Games access to the docks will be highly restricted.
Several tests will take place in the section of the river that crosses the city. In fact, the recovery of the river for the aquatic tests has been one of the great bets of the mayor Anne Hidalgo (this weekend a test of the Triathlon World Cup was held for the first time in and around the Seine).
The City Council has tried to calm the concerns of booksellers by offering to “take charge of the removal, renewal and reinstallation of the stalls.” In a press release, he underlined his support for booksellers, assuring that their activity “is part of the identity of the city and the quays of the Seine.” And, without questioning the decision of the Prefecture, the municipal corporation has tried to propose solutions.
In fact, the renewal of the stalls could be an additional legacy of the Games, which also helps the candidacy to make the bouquinistes intangible cultural heritage of Unesco, according to some comments.
The authorities have suggested the creation of a temporary space, a village littéraire, which could be located during the Olympics in the Place de la Bastille, near the river but not on the quays. One year after the Games, in a context of rivalry between the mayor of the capital, the President of the Republic and the organizing committee for the leadership of the event, the controversy surrounding a symbol of the city is a sensitive issue. Especially when the news has been picked up by the media around the world.
Although the peddling of books on the banks of the Seine dates back more than 450 years, the permanent installation dates back to 1859 (it was part of the efforts of Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III to order and homogenize the French capital).
The bouquinistes do not pay rent to the city but are independent traders and their survival is conditioned by their income. Therefore, losing several weeks during the summer season would be a serious blow to your finances. They remember the difficulties they have faced in recent years: from the riots in Paris every Saturday during the yellow vest protests, to the lockdowns and the collapse of tourism during the pandemic.
On the Célestins wharf, facing the Island of San Luis, the City Council’s proposal does not convince the booksellers who remain open in August, who are even more concerned about the transfer than the lost weeks of work. “Most do not want the posts to be withdrawn,” they explain, “some of them are very fragile and renewal is a significant cost.”
The same concerns on the other side of the river, on the rive gauche, where in addition to the future of the famous green wooden boxes, the storage of hundreds of books, in some cases valuable and fragile editions, for which an alternative space would have to be found. . “In addition, these stalls are part of the image of the city, they are part of the landscape, they are not just shops,” says one of the booksellers set up a few meters from Notre Dame Cathedral.
An alternative option that the representatives are discussing with the authorities would be to leave the boxes in place during the ceremony and the Games, and for them to be checked by security teams.
“They would be sealed and closed for seven days before the ceremony, and could not be opened during the Games,” explained Jérôme Callais in the same interview: “A solution that has been accepted by the vast majority of booksellers.”
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