As autumn takes hold in the northern hemisphere, wildland firefighters are hoping for a much-needed reprieve after a scorching summer. While the July fires in France’s Gironde region and Spain’s Almería province might have generated the most attention, more than 1.2 million hectares burned across southern Europe and North Africa, according to EU data. And yet extreme conditions persisted through September, with new forest fires cropping up south of Perpignan, along the Amalfi Coast and in central Greece.
North America faced its own bruising wildfire season, with flames ripping through residential neighbourhoods in Spokane, Washington, and continuing to burn through Canada’s far-northern boreal forests and across the thickly timbered mountains of the Pacific Northwest.
Even as the temperatures cool and much-needed fall rains help to quench the remaining blazes north of the equator, wildfire season is about to heat up in the southern hemisphere. From Australia and Chile to South Africa, the austral summer has its own sobering track record. Meanwhile, January will bring the two-year anniversary of the Palisades and Altadena fires in Los Angeles, a reminder that fire conditions can even develop in winter.
So with an increasingly year-round global wildfire season, who is in the business of detecting and tamping out the flames? Here are five companies sparking new ideas – from analog aviation retrofits to high-tech AI-enabled cameras – to help firefighters on the front lines.
Dryad Networks
Germany
Dryads are tree nymphs in Greek mythology. But in modern-day Germany, it is the brand behind an innovative wildfire-detection system. The company’s green pendulum-shaped sensors hang from trees to catch forest fires almost from the moment of ignition by sensing the gas compounds that are released from burning wood. In thick tree canopies, this method can be faster than camera-based systems.
In 2023 Dryad secured €10.5m in Series A funding to scale its ambitions globally and opened an office in Australia last year. Over the summer, a Korean national-park delegation inspected a Dryad installation deployed in California, while a Dryad team was busy running tests in a remote part of Alaska en route as a finalist for the Xprize Wildfire competition.
dryad.net
Umgrauemeio
Brazil
In 2020 Brazil was hit by devastating wildfires in the Amazon rainforest and the Pantanal. In the latter, flames tinged roughly a quarter of the vast wetland, which is spread mostly across Brazil, as well as parts of Bolivia and Paraguay. The fires shook up a nation whose identity is defined by its close relationship to nature and sparked a desire for domestic technology to detect future fires.
Enter Umgrauemeio, which translates to “one point five”, a reference to the goal of keeping global warming below 1.5C. Using its own high-resolution cameras coupled with satellite data – all fed through proprietary AI-led analytical software – the country pledges to detect new wildfires in under three seconds with its Pantera system. Today, Umgrauemeio has more than 39 million hectares under surveillance across Brazil and Spain, while its wildfire-prevention campaigns have won awards from the likes of the UN.
umgrauemeio.com
Coulson Aviation
Canada
Watchtowers Networks
Australia
The fire lookout perched on a lonely mountain peak once inspired literature. Jack Kerouac’s Desolation Angels is based on his 63-day stint on Desolation Peak while Gary Snyder’s “Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout” is a classic Beat poem. Sadly, a set of human eyes deep in the wilderness is a lost art, one to which Australian start-up Watchtowers Networks pays homage with its dual-camera automated systems that rotate continuously to provide a 360-degree panorama over remote forests up to 70km away.
Founded in the wake of the so-called Black Summer bushfires that devastated large swaths of land Down Under from late 2019 to early 2020, Watchtowers’ systems are now in service in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, as well as the US state of Utah, while the company’s new Lookouts service provides a wholly Australian AI smoke-detection model.
watchtowers.io
Seneca
USA
Drones can fight wars, rescue disaster victims and deliver pizzas, so surely they can fight fires too. San Francisco-based Seneca launched last year with $60m (€53m) in venture funding; an advisory board stocked with wildland fire professionals; and a compelling product: autonomous suppression drones that can carry 75 litres of water or foam retardant and spray down spot blazes with high-pressure hoses. Designed to complement, not replace, firefighters, the heavy-duty drones are more like mini-helicopters. They take a few beefy firefighters to muscle but they are small enough to transport on the back of a pick-up truck to a remote fire site.
seneca.com
A most surprising, curious thing happened early Monday evening: some people showed up at my apartment unannounced. Worry not – home invasions have thankfully not arrived in Lisbon and there was a small window of warning in the form of a phone call. “We’re 500 metres away from you and should be ringing the buzzer soon.” They must have been doing some kind of crab walk because it took them about 20 minutes to cover the half kilometre, which gave the household a comfortable margin to shuffle magazines, fluff cushions, check the bar and inspect the lighting. As I went about these tasks, I tried to recall: when was the last time someone came by without days or weeks of planning?
Perhaps if you live in a hilltop village in Piedmont or a cosy town in New Hampshire, this happens every day and you always need to be ready to welcome, host and let the day or evening take its course. I grew up with these types of spontaneous diversions. In Kitchener, circa grade two, Peter would knock on our back door (never the front) and suggest that we go buy some gum and comics or ride our bikes to the park. In early-1980s Ottawa, Susan and Jennifer would call after dinner and invite me over for a swim and a Duran Duran singalong. And in Notting Hill, early 1990s, Melanie, Max, Sally and many others would just drop in on a Saturday afternoon or early on a Sunday evening. Why did it stop? Is it part of modern big-city life? Are we more guarded and private? Is it more of an upper northern hemisphere thing?
Anyway, I was very happy to go down to the lobby to welcome Henri and Solène and shepherd them upstairs via the service lift – not because this was a clandestine operation but because we’re waiting for Kone to come up with an inspired replacement solution for the main lift. Settled in the living room, Solène apologised for the intrusion. She said that they had just attended a screening for one of her documentaries around the corner and felt the urge to seize the moment, swing by to say hello and catch up on the world. As I mixed G&Ts and poured wine while Mats organised the snacks (if you haven’t tried Mercadona’s canned jalapeño olives, you’re in for a proper treat), Henri gave his take on the situation in France and the state of Europe in general, and Solène was full of questions about my recent trip to São Paulo. The conversation moved towards cinema and Solène’s hopes for another Oscar (she’s a producer), more on France and whether Portugal has the apparatus in place to dodge the problems of its neighbours. For the record, I was a bit more hopeful than Henri, as I believe that Portugal has geography, ginga and favourable demographics on its side. But let’s see.
At some point, the conversation moved to furniture acquisitions and sofa makers (the pair have just taken on new digs in another part of town), more G&Ts were prepared and then an invitation was extended to meet visiting parents later in the week. As our Mercadona snack supply was dwindling and there was a nanny who needed to come off shift, Henri and Solène said their goodbyes and disappeared down the service lift. What could have been a perfectly cosy evening à deux turned into something lively, off-script and oddly nostalgic. As we tidied up and sat down to catch the final episodes of The Gentlemen, I decided that it’s time for more spontaneous appearances.
For our subscribers in Manila, you have now been officially warned: I’m about to show up for a little surprise visit and, rather than minutes, you have a full week to prepare. See you soon!
Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.
France is preparing for another weekend of unrest following this month’s protests against rising costs of living and the deterioration of public education. What began as peaceful public demonstrations quickly escalated into widespread violence, with police deployed across the country in a bid to prevent further looting and vandalism. According to justice minister Gérald Darmanin, more than 2,000 people were taken into police custody last weekend alone.
In Strasbourg-Saint-Denis, dark plumes of smoke rose from trash-can fires, while looters – hundreds, by some estimates – broke into shops. “They came out of nowhere,” said Vincent, the owner of a tobacco shop in the neighbourhood. He added that he tried to find and call the police but no one came. “They said that they were completely overwhelmed and that they couldn’t help.”
The riots across the country exposed both the government’s lack of preparation for the protests and a deeper issue with its strategy for maintaining public order. Opposition politicians blamed the administration for the misallocation of police forces, questioning why so few specialised units were deployed to quell the unrest and why it took hours to put forces on the ground. In Marseille, only one riot unit was on hand to monitor the demonstrations. Far too few officers were there to respond when several hundred rioters arrived in the city by early morning, breaking into the town hall and tipping over a statue.
Despite weeks of social-media buzz leading up to the demonstrations, French intelligence services allegedly underestimated their size. On the day of the protests, about 550,000 people took to the streets, which dwarfed the some 60,000 security forces that had been deployed to keep the peace. “In certain large cities, we lost control,” said interior minister Laurent Nuñez on France Inter, acknowledging “a lack of anticipation.”
That limited foresight coincided with the complexity of policing a crowd as varied as the day’s demonstration. Officers had to manage “three topics at once: peaceful demonstrators, opportunistic looters and more organised ‘breakers’ attacking state institutions”, said Sébastien Malzieu, senior police commissioner at the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) central directorate. The CRS is part of France’s national police force, dedicated to security and crowd control. The group has several specialised units, such as the CRS 8 – a highly mobile and trained riot-policing unit that acts as a Swat team – but these were only deployed in the late afternoon of 17 October to assist with the riots.
“Stopping the violence was difficult and time consuming,” said Malzieu. Police tracked looters throughout the night and over the next two days. “Officers had to go street by street, shop by shop, following the long protocol for making arrests,” he added, arguing that the operation did not result in the collapse of public order. “A great majority of institutions were protected.”
While citizens have expressed outrage over looted businesses and affected town halls, many have also criticised the government and police response to the demonstrations. On the ground, the police used tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades in an attempt to stem the unrest. French regulations require several warnings to be issued before force is used but videos circulating online reveal tear gas at peaceful gatherings. Reports also show that the CRS used la nasse (kettling), a controversial tactic that involves surrounding a group of protesters and preventing them from leaving, often trapping peaceful demonstrators alongside those suspected of violence.
Ahead of this weekend’s demonstrations, the government has opted for a drastic escalation of its security measures. On Tuesday it asked local authorities to establish curfews in several cities. To protect sensitive sites, it also announced the deployment of troops from the army’s long-running counterterrorism operation, who were last mobilised during the Yellow Vests protests of 2019. The Brigade de Recherche et d’Intervention (BRI) and Brav-M motorcycle units are also involved today, the latter of which is infamous for several court convictions related to brutalising protesters and journalists.
Mobilising such a battery of militarised police forces reflects a textbook pattern in the government’s handling of street unrest in recent years. During the student protests in early October, interior minister Laurent Nuñez ordered that authorities use anti-riot weapons with “no restraint”. The declaration contributed to renewed public outrage over police violence, particularly around the CRS units, whose use of anti-riot grenades and rubber bullets have maimed several high schoolers during those demonstrations.
“[The government’s] strategy is one of political desperation,” said Sebastian Roché, research director at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research and co-author of La Police Contre La Rue. “The use of the army, for example, is not a strategy that will add efficiency to dealing with public disorder. It sends a message about waging a war against the youth and people who are angry about their purchasing power.”
Where France goes from here is yet to be seen. Its politicians have used the riots as an opportunity to trade blame. Prime minister Sébastien Lecornu attributed the violence to the far left; La France Insoumise’s left-wing leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, criticised the government’s policing strategy; and Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National blamed the government and immigrants (there is no proof that migrants or the far left were responsible for the riots).
As France prepares to head to the polls next year, policing will surely be at the centre of the debate. Mélenchon and Le Pen offer sharply contrasting visions of law and order. The next presidential election will not only shape how France responds to future unrest but also whether it can find a way out of the cycle of escalation between protesters and the state.
Monocle contacted the French Interior Ministry, which declined to answer questions.
This week gallery representatives, advisers and collectors alike have been crowding into Karl Lagerfeld’s former home at the Hôtel de Maisons in Saint-Germain-des-Prés for Design Miami Paris. Prices, provenance and acquisitions were discussed in hushed tones as the design and art market got down to business at the event.
Highlights included the Designers of Tomorrow showcase, a collaboration between Design Miami Paris and Apple. Curated by Rodman Primack, it brought together four emerging studios with the theme of “Design for Presence”. Among its contributors is New York-based Isabel Rower, who presented “Padded Chair 1860”, a 19th-century boudoir-inspired seat with a fringe made of 1,500 ceramic beads. For Rower, a craft’s sense of presence begins in the making, especially with the surrender that ceramic requires: colour and finish are never predictable. “There is this inherent embracing of the presence of the present, of opening the kiln and relinquishing any control,” she says. The slow, laborious, ritualistic process brought her a “monastic” kind of presence. “Rower has created an invitation to sit,” says Primack, explaining that the piece invites people to remain still – to pause. But touch the beads and a soft clatter interrupts the expected moment of rest, drawing attention to the body and its surroundings. “It wakes you up,” adds Rower.
But the chair was not the only work to reward reflection at Design Miami Paris. Wrapping up tomorrow, the multi-day showcase of collectible design – from one-off pieces to antique treasures – was steered by curatorial director, Charlene Prempeh. Here are three other studios and galleries that caught Monocle’s eye.
The A/P Room
UAE
Based in Dubai, The A/P Room made its Paris debut at Design Miami Paris with a presentation of international designers that pushed materials into unexpected territory. California-based artist Rogan Gregory, for one, brought the farm to the table. His almost-two-metre-long upholstered chandelier combines goat fur with gypsum, while his smaller sculptural lights bring together bronze and horse hair.
theaproom.com
Pulp Galerie
France
Paris-based Pulp Galerie also made a bold first entrance to Design Miami, with orange walls and a prime spot by the doors of the Hôtel de Maisons. Specialising in design from the 1980s to the 2000s, the gallery’s manifesto reads, “style before function, form above all”. Gaetano Pesce’s Canovaci lights embody this spirit. Made with Italian glassmaker Venini, the luminaries are a ludic nod to laundry strung across Italian alleyways.
pulpgalerie.com
Galerie Scène Ouverte
France
At the presentation of “Around a Desk”, Galerie Scène Ouverte turned the 18th-century room into a sculptural office space. Made from peeled and unfurled layers of maillechort (nickel silver), Studio Lugo’s desk and library evoke the organic. “The manufacturing process is not concealed; it is highlighted, embraced and placed at the very heart of the creative gesture. A sculptural horizontality serves a functional object whose layers of metal unfold like geological strata or petals”, says founder Laurence Bonnel.
galerie-sceneouverte.com
1.
On Tuesday I walked over to Soho to see a preview screening of Spanish-language film La Bola Negra, directed by “Los Javis” (Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo). It’s a story set during the Spanish Civil War and the present day. It’s about love and desire. It’s about secrets and telling the truth. It’s about being gay. The film could be an Oscar contender for Best Picture: a campaign that will be aided by the shimmering, mesmerising presence of Penélope Cruz and a poised performance from Glenn Close.
Now, press screenings are not the most intimate of settings. The room is usually packed with seen-it-all critics who make their living from finding fault, taking things apart, spending the duration of the film scribbling big thoughts in little notepads. But in this velvet-chaired cocoon, I found myself lost in this epic, weaving and sometimes fantastical tale. The directors deliberately take their time to stitch all the narratives together (at one point I wondered if I should ask my jotting-away neighbour if he knew what the hell was happening). But even this pacing keeps you transfixed.
Towards the end of the film – when all is finally clear – there’s a fleeting moment when a young man stoops to kiss the head of his boyfriend. It’s just an “I’m here for you” kiss but I felt a tear jog down my face, and then another. I brushed them away. Why was I crying? For them, for me, for us? I need to see the film again because there’s something buried there. A little bit of me? A little bit of you too?
2.
There’s something that I forgot to tell you about my brother-in-law’s funeral. Phil had been partial to a Starbucks, so his granddaughter arrived at the funeral service carrying a venti latte. She placed this next to the coffin. I was desperate to see if, for once, a Starbucks employee had managed to spell a name correctly but I was too far away.
Anyway, this last order for Phil sat there throughout the entire service. It was even there as the curtains closed and the coffin was dispatched to the flames. I have mentioned this Starbucks detail to a few people and it seems that, just as the ancient Egyptians entombed their dear departed pharaohs with all sorts of crap for the afterlife – mummified cats, cooking utensils, electric barbecues – modern grievers are keeping the tradition alive. I have been told of a Sunday roast being brought to a church and numerous pints of beer (even, in one case, to the funeral of a gentleman who had died an alcoholic).
Just so you know, I think that I will be happy to go to the next world free of pizza or pies – even if, finally, the carbs don’t matter. Though if you order one final cheeky margarita, I might be up for that.
3.
On Monday, London will discover that a 1km stretch of the famous retail strip Oxford Street has been pedestrianised overnight. I wrote about this news for the Monocle Minute yesterday. I am sure that the project will be a success but I grew up in a new, postwar town with a fully pedestrianised centre and it was rubbish. It would have been so much nicer with cars. To keep the retail streets pedestrian only, the town was ringed by ugly multi-storey car parks. And, at night, once the shops had closed, it was desolate. People preferred to drive to pubs and restaurants in nearby villages. Over the years the town centre became edgy at night; the walkways stank of wee. Meanwhile, neighbouring towns with traffic, movement and activity thrived.
The plans for Oxford Street seem full of potential. But just getting rid of cars is not enough. I will watch and wait a while before getting too giddy about this change.
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In a city where tourism is increasingly seen as a threat to local culture, Barcelona’s independent bookshops are thriving. Even as cinemas close and small music venues disappear, the city’s number of bookshops has climbed to 140, a 30 per cent increase since 2008. According to the Catalan Guild of Booksellers, new openings have far surpassed closures in recent years, though some have struggled to keep their doors open.
In 2024, the threatened closure of the historic Llibreria Sant Jordi triggered weeks of public mobilisation. While it ultimately shut, it reopened a year later with a gastronomic offering. The episode underscored deeper anxieties over skyrocketing rents, the declining use of Catalan and the strain that a tourism-driven economy places on local life. And yet, while more retailers stock titles in English and other languages, Catalan-language publishing is growing too. Barcelona’s new wave of bookshops has become a valuable refuge for locals and foreigners alike.
1.
Ona
Since launching as a small shop in Gràcia in 1962, Ona slowly built a reputation for its selection of Catalan literature. A few years ago, second-generation owner Montse Úbeda teamed up with entrepreneur Tatxo Benet to expand the business and, upon opening a 900 sq m space on Carrer Pau Claris in 2020, Ona became the world’s largest bookshop dedicated to Catalan-language books.
The boutique also stocks a selection of Catalan literature translated into 15 languages, from English to Mandarin. “We stock 1,500 references by authors who write in Catalan that have been translated into other languages,” says Ona’s director, Iolanda Batallé. “It’s painstaking work because we have to go publisher to publisher but we’re very proud of it.”
Ona has grown fivefold over the past six years, hosting book clubs, talks and live music in its café space, as well as a busy schedule of events in its vast children’s section. “Most bookshops have only about 30 per cent of books in Catalan because Spanish takes over,” says Batallé. “Shops like Ona are very important for the growth of the Catalan publishing industry.”
- Recommended novel: Ona director Iolanda Batallé is the author of I’ll Do Anything You Want, published in 2013
- Current bestsellers: Death in Spring and In Diamond Square by Mercè Rodoreda
- Catalogue: 53,000
2.
Llibreria Sant Jordi
When the longtime owner of Llibreria Sant Jordi, Josep Morales, passed away in 2024, the historic bookshop in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter announced that it would be closing its doors. After an appeal urging book lovers to buy its remaining stock, hundreds of people turned up to purchase discounted books on art, photography, design and illustration. The event morphed into a spontaneous tribute to a local business which – with its listed 19th-century wooden shopfront – had been a fixture of the street since the early 1980s.
“The neighbours made it clear that they didn’t want yet another shop to close,” says Alba Biliotti, who now helps run the business under a new model. To the delight of locals, Llibreria Sant Jordi reopened its doors in December 2025 with most of its interiors unchanged. In the evenings after shoppers have left, the space transforms into a restaurant that hosts book clubs, literary discussions and dinners with authors. “Most people still come because it’s their local bookshop,” says Billiotti. “But now it has two different atmospheres. Some people come for dinner and walk out with a book, while others come to buy a book and end up staying for a drink.”
- Year of opening: 1983
- On the menu: Piquillo peppers stuffed with cod brandade and caramelised foie with Kalamata olives and fig jam
- Current bestseller: The Little Frog’s Guide to Self-Care by Maybell Eequay
3.
Laie
In 1980, four young women opened the doors of Laie on Barcelona’s Carrer de Pau Claris without much fanfare. “Back then it wasn’t customary to announce the opening of a bookshop; it wasn’t considered particularly newsworthy,” co-founder Conxita Guixà wrote for the shop’s 40th anniversary in 2020. “Perhaps three or four people came in during the first few hours.” Four decades later, Laie runs 35 outposts all over Spain, from Santiago de Compostela to Palma de Mallorca.
Fresh out of university, co-founders Conxita Guixà and Montse Moragas wanted to create a space dedicated to the humanities and critical thinking. It quickly became a meeting point for the city’s intellectuals, who would hide their favourite books in the wrong sections so that they could purchase them later. In the 1990s, a café and restaurant opened on the first floor. On any given day, you can still spot journalists, authors, playwrights and politicians conducting interviews or discussing book deals over a plate of ham croquetas or fish soup. “Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, walked in the other day and I had to act normal,” says literary director Damià Gallardo. “Laie has become a nerve centre of Barcelona’s culture; people have made it their own.”
- Year of opening: 1979
- First book ever sold: An anthology by the Greek poet Giorgos Seferis
- Current bestseller: La Bola by Daniel Verdú, which was recently presented at the bookshop
- Recommended novel by Damià Gallardo: What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt
4.
Llibreria Byron
Huygens, a publisher dedicated to academic and educational titles, was planning to open its first bookshop in April 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic hit. When it finally opened months later, it was welcomed by locals who had rediscovered the pleasure of reading during Spain’s strict lockdowns. Founded by editor Mariana Sarrias and law professor Víctor M. Sánchez, Llibreria Byron – named after the British poet – opened with a café, quiet reading nooks and a space for events, designed with the ambition of giving neighbourhood residents a place to reconnect. “We decided to call it a bookshop but right from the start, we wanted it to be more than that: a place where culture is brought to life, not just sold in the form of books,” says Sarrias.
Byron has a large children’s and young-adult section, and a packed calendar of community events. Every Friday a group of neighbours from El Raval gathers for a philosophical coffee hour to debate a variety of questions from the dangers of consumerism to the role of uncertainty in daily life. These discussions often take place around a walnut-panelled fireplace that Sarrias found in an antiques shop and had restored before placing it at the heart of the shop. Though it’s powered by electricity, it still fulfils its intended purpose: to create a cosy, welcoming atmosphere for people to get lost in a book. In the evenings, Byron makes space for music too. The café’s grand piano is used for everything from jazz performances to renditions of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
- Recommended book: A Man Asleep by Georges Perec
- Poetry book-club pick: Hardly Creatures: Poems by Rob Colgate
- Bestselling Spanish-language book: Insular by Franco Chiaravalloti
5.
Llibreria Finestres
Llibreria Finestres (Catalan for “windows”) opened in 2021 inside a modernist building by architect Enric Sagnier. Just a few steps from Passeig de Gràcia, the shop was designed by Quintana Partners and is furnished with carpets, sofas, well-lit reading nooks and a fireplace. The retailer describes itself as “a bookshop for reading”, where patrons are invited to curl up with a book inside or linger on the terrace with a glass of vermut.
A second location opened shortly after the first, dedicating its venue to comic books as well as publications on illustration and art. Thanks to its success, the business’s expansion has continued: another outpost arrived in the coastal town of Palamós last summer and in May, Finestres Palestina, an outlet devoted to Palestinian culture and literature, opened in the Gràcia neighbourhood. Designed by Valencia-based Palestinian architect Malek Murad Mateu, the latest addition features bright green sculptural bookshelves, hand-woven rugs and an indoor fountain inlaid with a mosaic map of Palestine.
Run by the Finestres Foundation, the bookshop is also behind several literary awards and writers’ residencies. Its impressively multilingual selection includes titles in English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Galician and Basque, alongside Spanish and Catalan.
- Number of bookshops: 4
- Phones off: The poor signal inside the shop serves as an unexpected advantage, stopping notifications and incoming calls from interrupting your browsing session
- A line from its foundational manifesto: “We know that there are a lot of bookshops in the city. We also noticed that there are even more readers than bookshops.”
6.
Llibreria Calders
After several bookshops in Catalonia closed following the 2008 financial crisis, journalist and writer Isabel Sucunza and historian Abel Cutillas teamed up in 2014 to open a space to showcase the work of new small publishing houses. Named after Catalan writer Pere Calders, who lived in the Sant Antoni neighbourhood in his later years, Llibreria Calders occupies a former button factory in a small alley. It has gathered a loyal following for prioritising local authors over bestsellers. “At the time there were very few independent bookshops in Barcelona,” says Sucunza. “There also wasn’t a single one named after an author.”
The space resembles a vast wine cellar, with dark bookcases set against bare stone walls. Customers seek it out for its well-stocked poetry section, as well as its selection of titles on theatre and dramatic theory. “Poetry wasn’t so central to the bookshop at first but as soon as we started hosting recitals, we noticed that there was a huge demand for it,” says Sucunza. Readers can continue to pay homage to one of Catalonia’s most famed writers at the nearby bar, Calders, which serves “dishes of exile” inspired by the author’s banishment to Mexico after the Spanish Civil War.
- Books recently presented at the bookshop: A new Catalan translation of Homer’s Odyssey by Pau Sabaté
- All-time favourite book: The Day of the Watusi by Francisco Casavella, a coming-of-age novel about Barcelona from the Spanish Transition to the eve of the 1992 Olympic Games
- Number of titles in stock: Between 10,000 and 12,000
7.
Llibreria Terranova
A bookshop that specialises in art publications occupies a former shoe boutique on the corner of a 19th-century building in Sant Antoni. When the space became available in 2020, it caught the eye of Lucía Bonet and Luis Cerveró, who had long dreamt of opening a dedicated outpost of their publishing house, Terranova.
With the help of furniture design studio Owl, the pair restored the modernist listed building’s original features, including its tall ceilings and white wooden floorboards. The original bookshelves, which once stored shoe boxes, returned to their olive-green colour, while a custom-made central island that sits in the centre of the space was painted the same bright red as the Vico Magistretti Carimate chairs scattered throughout.
The shop features Terranova’s design-focused publications, alongside a broader selection of titles on art, fashion and design. Highlights include Servilletas, a book by photographer Felipe Hernández on napkins gathered from bars across Spain, and Sofia Coppola’s visual history of Chanel’s haute-couture designs.
Rather than sorting books by category, the duo has decided to arrange them randomly for customers to stumble upon as they browse. The shop hosts monthly exhibitions and houses a collection of rare books, which are available to view by appointment.
- Recent exhibitions: Madrid-based photographer Jesús Umbría Brito’s Familia Real, a series focusing on Spanish youth and counterculture
- Period covered by its rare-book collection: More than seven decades, from the 1950s to the present
- Year that publishing house Terranova was founded: 2014
8.
Altaïr
With so many visitors regularly passing through the city, it’s perhaps not surprising that Barcelona is home to Europe’s biggest travel specialist bookshops. In 1979, Pep Bernadas founded Altaïr – named after one of the brightest stars in the night sky – in a small space in Barcelona’s El Raval neighbourhood, where he began to collect guidebooks. It quickly outgrew that first venue and, for the past 20 years, has occupied a vast space spanning three floors in the Eixample, where globetrotters can peruse an unparalleled selection of maps, travel guides and titles that cover every corner of the world. “The only country that we haven’t been able to get any books on is San Marino,” says Altaïr’s director, Helena Bernadas.
Books are organised by country in order of their proximity to Spain, from an extensive selection of publications on Barcelona all the way to a section on Oceania downstairs. Since 1992 the business has also housed a travel agency and an online magazine of the same name, both of which are centred on a “more anthropological than touristic” approach to travel. It is the bookshop, however, that plays the most important role in preparing for any trip. “We like to put together a curated reading list for our customers that includes guides but also fiction or poetry,” says Bernadas. “There are a million different ways to engage with Japanese culture, for example, so we try to find the titles that best reflect our customers’ specific interests.”
- Recommended book: The Innocent Anthropologist by Nigel Barley
- Number of maps in stock: 11,000
- Number of guidebooks in stock: 16,000
9.
Llibreria +Bernat
During his teenage years, Carles Armengol helped his parents’ business by serving tables at their restaurant in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. When the establishment eventually closed in 2012 after 80 years in the family, Armengol began to write. His debut book, Collado: La maldición de una casa de comidas (Collado: The Curse of a Diner), was published in 2022 and explores his complicated feelings about the restaurant industry.
Today Armengol has brought his two passions – food and literature – into a single space. After he presented his novel at +Bernat, the bookshop’s owner, Montse Serrano, offered him the opportunity to open a café inside the shop. Today +Bernat describes itself as a place where “literature feeds you”. Walls lined with the latest releases surround tables where Armengol serves a simple lunch menu of classic Catalan dishes, such as fideu casserole or chickpea stew with calamari. He spends the rest of the day assembling sandwiches named after classics made with local produce, from Crime and Punishment (sobressada and Minorcan cheese, roast aubergine and honey) to Il Gattopardo (mortadella from Bologna with cashew pesto, scamorza and spinach). “A café and a bookshop are destined to work well together,” says Fernando Pelayo, who runs the bookshop while Armengol tends the bar. “They make each other stand out.”
- Recommended book: Beginning, Middle, End by Valeria Luiselli
- Bestselling sandwich: The Bikini (Barcelona’s iconic grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich). At +Bernat it is named Collado, after Armengol’s book
- Year that the bookshop first opened: 1978
Further reading?
– Leaf through London with 10 bookshops that are bound to please
– Seven Amsterdam bookshops worth writing home about
– Ten of the best bookshops in Paris
On Monday morning Londoners will awake to a seismic change in how the city gets around. A 1km stretch of Oxford Street, one of the most famous retail strips in the world, will suddenly be for pedestrians only. No buses, taxis or bicycles will be allowed along a part of the road between Orchard Street and Great Portland Street. It’s a switch that was first mooted in the 1960s and that – at various stages – residents, retailers and local councils have thwarted. Determined to deliver the project, London mayor Sadiq Khan set up a development corporation in January that gave him the necessary planning powers to push the measure through. Some 10 months later, it’s happening.
On Sunday night, teams will come in to remove bus stops and redundant traffic signals but it will take some months for new seating, plazas and planting to be added. Nabeel Khan, the new corporation’s chief executive, says that Monday “is going to be the start of what will be a period of change, test and review”. He makes it clear that the key ambition is to make a vibrant street that works for Londoners and visitors. “The economic performance of this street and the wider West End is critical. And all the evidence suggests that once you pedestrianise a space and make it easier for people to visit, to dwell, this results in more spending for retailers.”
Will it work? Pedestrianisation is not always a panacea. In the UK during the 1960s, for example, many town centres lost footfall and became hangouts for vagrants and pockets of crime without the bustle of traffic. Oxford Street will only thrive if it becomes a public space that people have affection for and use, if security is robust and if it does not become a police-car-free haven for pickpockets and phone-snatchers. The ambition, however, is there.
On Monday, Monocle Radio’s ‘The Globalist’ will be reporting live from Oxford Street.
Further reading
Interview: Sadiq Khan on designing the London of the future
After decades of failure, are North America’s pedestrian malls on the road to success?
A short time ago, in a country far, far to the right, a museum opened to great fanfare and much debate in the art world. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (LMNA) in Los Angeles is the $1bn (€892m) brainchild of George Lucas, creator of Star Wars and co-creator of Indiana Jones, and his wife, Mellody Hobson. When the futuristic Ma Yansong-designed building recently opened its doors to the public, many critics took the museum’s apparent anti-intellectualism as a Death Star-style attack on the Western museum. The LMNA – which, in a conscious effort to elevate the art of illustration, employs a laconic labelling system and prioritises experience over academic explanation – stands accused of collapsing the supposed boundaries between high and low culture.
The question at the heart of the row is a simple one: should an art museum make us think or feel? Describing the LMNA as everything from “upending the art world” to bringing “the history of the Western art museum to its inevitable conclusion”, the critics seem to suggest that the experience of art is somehow separate to understanding it. Lucas disagrees. In an interview with Vogue, the world-builder put his cards on the Sabacc table. “My feeling is that art is emotional,” he said. “It’s not intellectual. Are you emotionally connected to it? If you’re connected, it’s art. And if you’re not, then it’s not art.”
Lucas isn’t alone. As LMNA was lambasted across the media galaxy, the Fondation Beyeler unveiled three new buildings by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor in a picturesque slice of suburban Basel. Forming part of its “expanded ensemble”, the additions meld into a now-public parkland that all but doubles the footprint of Switzerland’s most-visited museum (more on this in Monocle’s just-published Design Directory).
Like Lucas, Zumthor builds superstructures on the foundation of his beliefs. His architectural style leans on feelings through spaces that prioritise sensory experience and emotional resonance. “Feelings encompass much more than thinking,” he says. “Your emotions contain things that you don’t even consciously remember.” This is not to say that Zumthor dismisses intellect out of hand. “But let’s not make museums too didactical,” he adds.
Lucas and Zumthor’s desire to do away with art-world didacticism is at odds with the view of critics who believe that museums are essentially places that provide context, interpretation and intellectual architecture for the understanding of art. But these are not just places to think and contextualise; they’re also places to stretch out emotionally, to reach for fresh feelings and new ways of understanding ourselves. Meanwhile, one critic wrote that he left the LMNA disappointed because he failed to learn anything beyond what he already knew, which sounds suspiciously like someone who went in search of facts and was frustrated to find art.
Just as impressionism emerged as a reaction to the stale sobriety of academic painting, art museums that premise feeling and sensuality are not aberrations but natural reactions to the heady pace of modernity. People don’t want to walk into galleries that make them feel dull or stupid – they want galleries that make them feel human. Or, at least, feel something. If impressionism was “the new painting”, the LMNA and Fondation Beyeler are the new museums. The critical backlash can be put down to the fact that the new almost always comes as a shock. But in an era of heightened instability, perhaps the likes of Lucas and Zumthor are simply bringing balance to the force.
For Serbians, Sunday’s parliamentary elections will feel like a novelty. It might be the country’s seventh such vote since 2012 but, for the first time in 14 years, the result will not be easy to predict.
Aleksandar Vučić is facing an unfamiliar challenge. None of the elections since his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) entered government have featured a credible alternative proposition for voters. Whether serving as president or prime minister, he has been the undisputed man in charge, taking control of so many aspects of government that critics mockingly dubbed him “Superman”. The Vučić-friendly media has embraced the label, portraying him as the tireless, sleepless protector of the Serbian people.
This time, however, most opposition parties have stepped aside to allow a clear run for the Student List, a grassroots anti-corruption movement fielding candidates to run against the former president. In a move that indicates wisdom beyond their years, the students have not put themselves forward as a potential government. Instead they have nominated uncontroversial academics and athletes, alongside a few economists and engineers.
Heart surgeon Ilija Srdanović is at the top of the candidate list. If the Student List wins, he is the most likely to become prime minister. On the campaign trail, Srdanović has proven himself to be a snappy dresser with wit to match. Like the rest of the Student List, however, he has no prior political experience. The movement insists that this is a strength rather than a weakness. From a wide range of professional backgrounds, the student-approved candidates are – crucially – untainted by the suspicion of corruption and cronyism that clings to most of Serbia’s political class.
But the nature of the opposition is not the only obstacle that Vučić faces. His kryptonite is arguably the event that triggered the student protests. Sixteen people died in November 2024, when a concrete canopy collapsed at a railway station in Serbia’s second city, Novi Sad. This was not a crumbling piece of ex-Yugoslav architecture but a key part of Vučić’s signature infrastructure project: the high-speed railway linking Belgrade to Budapest.
Distancing himself from the disaster was always going to be difficult. Two years prior, Vučić held a rally at the re-opening of the facility alongside Hungary’s then-prime minister, Viktor Orbán. From the top of the station canopy, the message from the speeches was clear: the railway project was going to transport the country into the future and voters could trust Vučić to be the man behind the wheel.
Above all else, this projection of competence has been the key to Vučić’s electoral success. Detractors – and international monitors – have correctly highlighted the SNS’s domination of media coverage and its use of state resources to boost its share of the vote. But a significant proportion of Serbia’s voters just liked the cut of Vučić’s jib. As long as they saw him as a strong leader who was making life better in Serbia, they were willing to look the other way when it came to allegations of authoritarianism.
The Novi Sad disaster significantly dented Vučić’s public perception. Now the question is: will the Student List be able to take advantage of the former leader’s tainted image where other opposition movements have failed? Vučić has resigned as president so that he can lead the SNS’s list of candidates for prime minister. In essence, he is betting everything on the hope that enough of his “Superman” aura remains.
They say a musician’s sophomore album is always the hardest: after the critical acclaim of a breakout debut, expectation weighs heavy on an artist and production team. The same could be said for the follow-up edition of a magazine. Which raises the question: for the Monocle Design Directory’s second outing, how could we step it up? We didn’t want this issue to simply be a showcase of good-looking design – a round-up of handsome products and projects. Rather, we wanted to seek out people and places that demonstrate the impact that design can have beyond aesthetically pleasing architecture, and how it shapes communities and cultures.
To do so, we touched down in Baghdad to trace the work of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. Commissioned by the country’s ruling powers in the mid-20th century, the duo played a part in transforming the Iraqi capital into a major Western-style city. The ambition? To distinguish it from other Arab metropolises that were looking to the Soviet Union for inspiration. It was architecture intended to empower and embody a young nation, though it was ultimately co-opted by dictators. Yet it shaped a generation of Iraqi architects, including Rifat Chadirji. “I thought it imperative that, sooner or later, Iraq create for itself an architecture that is regional in character,” wrote Chadirji. The architect would go on to do exactly that.
We also saw how architecture can influence artistic experience, visiting the Fondation Beyeler near Basel, which has been newly expanded with three structures by Peter Zumthor. “Let’s not make museums too didactic,” he told Monocle’s Blake Matich. The result is a set of buildings that prioritise the viewer’s experience: there’s no artistic preamble, wall labels are spare and art is positioned so that visitors encounter it immediately. Large windows and abundant light put the galleries into conversation with the surrounding landscape. It’s a welcome reaction to screen and information saturation.
Design’s ability to transform economies is also on show, with the municipality as patron and dealmaker in Saint-Étienne. The French city is offering affordable studio space to creatives and grants to businesses that hire designers in a bid to supercharge its economy. In a similar vein, Brussels-based Rotor is building circular economies by reviving reuse, a practice that was the norm until industrial materials made new products cheaper than those that exist already.
All of this is rounded out by visits to communities in Kyoto, New York and Florence, where makers and quality of life go hand in hand. It’s a reminder that we can design the lives that we want, with creatives marching to the beat of their own drum.
Monocle on Design
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