Being born in one or another generation has, like everything, its pros and cons. For someone who is passionate about letters and the unmistakable smell that the pages of a book give off, arriving in the world in the 1930s made it difficult, in a certain way, to be able to enjoy what he liked the most when he felt like it. Félix Sagredo, from Brivies, did what he could and in 1947, coinciding with the inauguration of the first library in the city, his life changed.
He frequently went to that special place packed with works by the most illustrious, which at that time “was expecting more than 2,000,” he recalls. Carlos Virumbrales, together with his office of the Trade Unions, presided over the installation, located on the first floor of the same building that today houses the House of Culture. «This building belonged to the first public schools in the city, later it became a free high school education academy because there was no institute and in the end it was used as a library and offices of the Vertical Union of Farmers and Ranchers. On the ground floor, the musicians of the Municipal Music Band rehearsed », he explains.
Not even a year passed when Virumbrales, dazzled by that child’s interest in reading and the speed with which he devoured books, made him a proposal that he could not refuse despite his young age. At the age of ten he became the youngest volunteer at the Briviesca library and he began to open and close its doors every day.
One of the things he liked the most was recommending authors and titles to users, since although he barely lifted an inch from the ground, he used to read Emilio Salgari or Wenceslao Fernández Flórez, among others. He got to know the place where each of the works was located and when someone requested a specific one, “I took him to the exact point,” he recalls. Then, there were only three large shelves located on three sides of the room, except for the center’s loan service. “Since some of the copies were on the highest shelves, I had to climb on a chair to reach them since there wasn’t even a ladder to help us,” he jokes.
At the end of the 1940s, “owning a book was a luxury that only the best positioned could afford. The rest of the population had to sacrifice a lot to be able to get hold of one,” says Sagredo. For this reason, the reading room was frequented daily by a number of neighbors looking for new adventures hidden between the pages of available novels and stories. Such was the value of the works that when he was still very young, the Magi surprised him with a text that ended up slipping from his hands, falling to the ground and separating the spine from the pages. “I spent the whole day punished for it,” he recounts.
For two years he was the manager’s right-hand man, and the latter, grateful for his work, before Christmas 1949 paid him 100 pesetas for his services. “I invested one in modern cinema and saw a John Wayne movie, the remaining 99 I saved for my future whims,” he says.
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