Pause | The bookseller who circumvented Franco's censorship: "The key was in France"

This week, we're taking a break to learn the best-kept—and most daring—secrets of the booksellers who worked during the Franco dictatorship . How did they transport banned copies? Which bookstores are still operating?

"Albert Camus was always banned," explains Feli Corvillo , manager of the Polifemo bookstore in Madrid and the star of the new episode of Pausa , the El Confidencial podcast presented and directed by Marta García Aller and which you can listen to free and openly onIvoox , Spotify , and Apple Podcast . The surprising thing about Corvillo's testimony is not so much the censorship, which was already known, but how booksellers managed to avoid it . The most persecuted books, those by authors such as Miguel Hernández, Rafael Alberti, or Pablo Neruda , "did not come from Mexico or Argentina. They were published in those countries, and the censors knew it." The secret route? France.

Back then, crossing the border with books could get you into trouble. That's why booksellers, as Corvillo explains, became true cultural strategists . "Books imported in Spanish had to be sent through France, especially because if they were attempted through other countries, not a single one would make it through," he explains. This is also confirmed by Sergio Bang, who runs the Grant bookstore in Madrid and author of We come from the fire (Plaza&Janes, 2025) and which is the other protagonist of this Pause .

The cultural context of Madrid during the period of censorship was somewhat unusual. The regime allowed the existence of volumes in foreign languages, especially German, English, French, and Italian, and the channels these bookstores opened were the same ones booksellers used to introduce banned works among manuals and essays. " They were authentic acts of cultural resistance ," our protagonists explain.

You can listen to all episodes of Pausa by clicking here or onIvoox , Spotify and Apple Podcast .

This week, we're taking a break to learn the best-kept—and most daring—secrets of the booksellers who worked during the Franco dictatorship . How did they transport banned copies? Which bookstores are still operating?