There are lots of little independent bookstores in Montevideo, but two of the bigger ones really impressed me: Librería Más Verso Puro and Escaramuza. Both of them have gorgeous, august interiors, full of beautiful woodwork and coloured class and a generosity of spirit.
Both of them were an echo of the time when I grew up in London, when a multitude of bookshops and libraries flourished. The fact that they seem to be still thriving in Montevideo points to the presence of an engaged and enthusiastic book-reading public. But equally, there are important absences: no chain of Waterstones (four branches currently in Edinburgh) and presumably no substantial price-undercutting (yet) from Amazon.
There seems to be parallel phenomenon with stores that sell paint, building material, ironmongery — they are much more frequent and more evenly distributed than in Edinburgh. Most independent builders merchants and DIY places in Edinburgh got eclipsed by B&Q and Homebase. B&Q used to have around seven medium-sized stores distributed across the city, then gradually closed them down and aggregated everything into two mega-stores in out-of-town shopping centres. So just picking up a can of paint or box of screws can mean a 30 minute car journey.
Now that’s not to say that there are no chains in Montevideo. Particularly in food retailing, there are a number of ‘mini-market’ and supermarket chains. But none of them seems to have the achieved the level of dominance of the big four in the UK, where Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons jointly control about 70% of the market. Maybe there’s a moral here — protecting the local economy from monopolistic chains allows a more healthy ecosystem of independent businesses to thrive, with a denser network of neighbourhood stores.