It opened at the end of the sixties, when Barcelona was still a sad, gray city empty of tourists, but it had such modern and cosmopolitan spaces, such as Tuset Street, the Cova del Drac, or the Bocaccio nightclub, where you could breathe the fresh air coming from Europe. It was the Barcelona of the gauche divine, that of the nova canço; the Barcelona of the Drugstore, the most popular shopping center of the moment. A pioneer in Spain, the Drugstore on Paseo de Gracia was an emblematic venue, a labyrinth of mini shops and bars that filled this street with light and color for 20 years, 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
The idea came from Paris, imported by Luís Sentís Anfruns, a businessman with a good nose for business who was enthusiastic about the drugstore on the Champs Elysees, inspired in turn by those stores in the towns of the American West where the stranger could always find everything at any time. To bring the model to Barcelona, Sentís contacted Oscar Molinari and his mother, Carolina Herrera, (aunt of the fashion designer), Venezuelans, whom he convinced to bet together on the subject at 50%.
Located at number 71 Paseo de Gracia, with access also through Paseo Domingo, the first Drugstore in Barcelona, designed by the architect Peter Harnden, was an absolutely new establishment that set trends. It was equipped with all kinds of shops: stationery, bookstore, gift items, toys, gadgets, records, perfumery, boutique, tobacconist, electronics, newsstand, lottery, delicatessen, bars, restaurant and, what was its main characteristic, Permanently open, they only closed one hour, from six to seven in the morning, for cleaning. That Drugstore was, in the words of Arcadio Espada, a city within another, and at dawn it was the only city.
It was inaugurated in June 1967, with a massive party attended by a wide representation of celebrities, Salvador Dalí, Xavier Cugat and the actor Georges Hamilton, among others: “Dalí appeared with his strawberry tie, with Gala, dressed in bright yellow , a young friend and a small ocelot,” reported La Vanguardia.
Getting here had not been easy, "obtaining the permits to open 24 hours a day was the most complicated part - recalls Luís Sentís Hortet, son of the owner - it was finally achieved thanks to obtaining the denomination of tourist interest for the project."
Another of the problems they encountered was the pharmacy, an element considered of vital importance in this type of business that, in this case, did not meet the distance required by the regulations. “Studying the issue, we discovered that pharmacists from Morocco who moved to the peninsula were exempt from said regulations – says Luís Sentís - total, that I went to Ceuta and Melilla in search of a candidate. I got one, mr. Rico, we processed the permit with him and they gave it to him, but we had the entire College of Pharmacy against us.”
The stores were managed directly by the company, so to cover 24 hours, three shifts of staff were required. “The sales clerks who worked facing the public were girls, all very pretty, tall, thin and uniformed with a pistachio green miniskirt model designed by Paco Rabanne. The office was located in the attic and we did not have much of a relationship with them – recalls Rosa María Escriche, the Drugstore's management secretary –. During the years that I worked at the Drugstore, from before it opened until 1973, the atmosphere was very good, it was the fashionable place, and everyone used to come here, from the intellectuals to the poshest boys and girls. from the city."
The success led Sentís to repeat his experience in Madrid and, in November 1971, he opened the Drugstore on Calle Fuencarral, a true institution during the 1970s.
They were very intense years. On the terrace, covered in winter, the only one on Paseo de Gracia, fashion shows, movie premieres, record signings with live performances by the most sought-after artists of the moment were organized and, for Sant Jordi, the The deployment was brutal, "Carlos Barral inaugurated it with a speech and, at midnight we started selling books, a lot of writers and journalists came," says Luís Sentís.
The literary critic J.Ernesto Ayala Dip, at that time a night clerk at this bookstore, worked at one of these events, specifically on the Sant Jordi festival in 1971, “that day my floor manager ordered me to watch the entrance to the terrace cover that the establishment had on the sidewalk – Ayala Dip wrote in one of his chronicles – The order had to do with some literary talks that the Drugstore itself had organized on the occasion of Book Day. The priests of the Latin American literary boom plus some others not so well known or recognized were invited to these talks. Writers that I read or had read and admired, some more than others. That night I saw all the greats, I almost brushed against them.”
The Drugstore bookstore was a true benchmark in Barcelona, “the word spread that prohibited books were being sold and we had constant inspections by the Ministry, and it also became the epicenter of theft. I think they stole more books from us than we sold,” says Luís Sentís. The truth is that the business idea was very good, but management was difficult, you had to know everything, touch many keys, and the atmosphere degenerated. When all the nightlife venues closed, the Drugstore became a haven for night owls, the place for the last few drinks for a difficult audience.
The crisis of 1973-74 affected him fully. The discussions between the partners were constant, finally the Molinari withdrew. “I hadn't been in the business for years now – recalls Luís Sentís – but things went very badly for my father, they were quite difficult times and, in 1978, the Drugstore was left by the employees led by our director at the time, Mario Boet.”
Thus begins a new stage for the Drugstore on Paseo de Gracia which, by then, had already created a school: the Drugstore Liceo (1972) on La Rambla, the Drugstore David (1973) on Tuset street, and the Drag Blau (1973). in Lesseps square.
With the change in ownership, the original Drugstore also changed its style of business. Mario Boet rented the premises, and subleased the stores to third parties. Without the glamor of the first years and with the facilities already quite dilapidated, the establishment nonetheless continued to fulfill its role in catering to the whims of the clerks and bank employees who moved along this street, and at night it became the last stronghold of drug addicts, drunkards, prostitutes and hustlers.
"Despite the fact that security guards were hired, the nights were very complicated, there were always problems," says Nacho Borrell, who rented the bookstore during those years. "The bookstore worked like a cannon, we didn't stop," he recalls - In the morning The residents of the neighborhood would come, and the staff from the offices. In the afternoon it was another scene, García Márquez lived across the street and brought his friends, writers would come, we would chat. From twelve at night or one in the morning, the public of sex and drugs came and bought their stories, comics, erotic books... these people spent, they took the books five by five. On weekends, easy books were required for the families that left mass. They were three bookstores in one and we kept changing the tables depending on the time. We had three eight-hour shifts and two people in each one, doubled on holidays and weekends, that is, there were ten people and me, who came and went. A horrible organization chart, but it worked very well, we bought the news 150 at a time, and on Sundays we sold about 1,500 Vanguards, before midnight there was already a queue of people waiting for the press.”
The record store and the gift shop were also in operation, but the rest fell into frank decline. The end came to the Drugstore in 1992, by eviction from the lease. "Mario Boet charged the tenants a lump sum at the time, but he did not pay the rent - says Nacho Borrell - the owners of the farm, the Bassols family, did not renew the rent." It was the year, 1992, the year of the Olympic Games, another Barcelona had been born.
