MARINA ALONSO
“In this impersonal world people appreciate nice, human gestures”
In December of 2021 Marina Alonso (Palma, 1986) opened up her bookshop, La Salina, in the Santa Catalina neighbourhood. A very special place where she leaves recommendation notes for her customers, written in her own hand. “People appreciate anything that means getting away from the algorithm”, she says.
text César Mateu Moyà
photography Íñigo Vega
Deciding to open up a small neighbourhood bookshop two years ago, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and the Amazon and digital book pandemic, should suffice as an introductory letter telling us who Marina Alonso is. “I’m very positive, I believe in the flow of things, in humanity, and I think that there are always good things we can learn from in adversities”.
She decided to name her bookshop - located in a quiet street in Palma’s Santa Catalina district - La Salina. “One day, when I was walking with my family around Las Salinas (an area in the south-east of Mallorca where mountains of sea salt are produced), I felt that it was such a poetic image, all those microparticles which together, build a mountain. I thought that a bookshop is also like a mountain of salt, because each particle makes up a whole, and bookshops bear a great similarity to the tide, because the books enter and leave. And on some level it also connected to Pedro Salinas, the author of a poem that often accompanies me”.
In spite of her youth, Marina possesses a combination of culture, maturity and freshness not easily found in anyone. “Some time ago, when I travelled from one city to another, I did [...]
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