Italian bookshops around the world
Bookshop “PIENA” – Lisbon

Clelia Bettini interviews Sara Cappai, one of the two partners and owner of the bookshop PIENA. Books, Cultures and Visions in Lisbon.

So, Sara, let’s start immediately in medias res. How, when and why did you choose to open an Italian bookshop in Lisbon?

The decision to open an Italian bookstore in Lisbon was born during the pandemic years. I had recently moved to Lisbon and was working remotely for a communication agency. During my first months in Lisbon, I had met Elisa Sartor, who later became my accomplice and partner in this adventure. Elisa has a degree in architecture and had already been running another ludo-linguistics and design project in Lisbon for a few years related to Italian words and food. Shortly after we met, we had the idea of setting up a reading group in Italian, which was also attended by Portuguese, or at least foreigners, who read in Italian. We thought it was a good way to reappropriate the space in the city, because after the lockdown we felt a strong need to go back outside, to meet up: reading together with others was for us a way to start over, to begin living again. And the response from people was amazing! There was a desire to read, to share, to be together ‘with books’ in Italian, and so we came up with the idea of the bookshop and within a year we were ready to go. It was all very fast.

What was perhaps a bit more difficult was finding the right location. We didn’t want to be in a tourist area, because our desire was to create a bookshop capable of coming into contact with the community in which it was going to be introduced, capable of creating relationships with and in the community, a neighbourhood bookshop, for the Italian community, of course, but not only. And so, we chose to put down roots in Arroios, one of the bairros [neighbourhoods, editor’s note] of Lisbon with which we identified most: both Elisa and I have always frequented it a lot, because many friends live there and there are many independent realities, including other bookshops. It immediately seemed the right place for us to grow our idea.

For those who read us and don’t know Lisbon, we can say that Arroios is a neighbourhood bordering the most famous historical areas such as Graça, Mouraria, Alfama and Baixa-Chiado, which developed in the first decades of the twentieth century essentially as a residential area, which still retains much of its traditional layout, with its neighbourhood markets, shops and tascas, Lisbon’s typical city restaurants.

Yes, let’s say it is still a lively neighbourhood, inhabited mostly by Portuguese, though not exclusively, as is only right and proper. It is a place where people live and work. In short, it is still a neighbourhood in the true sense of the word.

Let’s focus on PIENA, to get to know it better. Where does the name come from?

We chose PIENA (Full) because it is an Italian name that also sounds good in Portuguese, not too difficult to pronounce. It is a versatile name that can be used in many different ways. PIENA is a very feminine, very round word, but it has a thousand meanings. To be full of love, to have a full belly, or that ‘I am fed up’ that I can’t take it any more… In short, it was a word that lent itself to many meanings, but in the end it also prefigured the place a bit, because it is very small and fills easily. PIENA is always full, and that is good, in every way.

Almost as if it were a literary work itself, the bookshop carries an explanatory ‘subtitle’: books, people and visions. What does this mean?

Inside the PIENA slogan are, first and foremost, the pillars of the bookshop, namely books and people. As for the choice of the third word visions, it comes from the fact that we have always wanted PIENA to be more than just a bookshop. It is certainly an open project that will change with time, in which, however, we immediately imagined also presenting works and events related to the world of graphics and design: this is more Elisa’s part, an expression of her skills and creativity that, after all, can be found everywhere in the bookshop: from communication to graphics, from the decoration of our shop window to the workshops we organise. The word ‘visions’ indicates the opening of ‘visual’ horizons, but it is also a characteristic that I feel is very much our own, because to open an Italian bookstore in Lisbon you have to be a bit of a ‘visionary’, that is, capable of imagining other horizons, of believing in something that does not yet exist. In this sense we have been ‘visionaries’, people capable of seeing the possibilities that can open up, that can be realised.

A reader who enters PIENA is faced with a vast assortment favourably comparable to a bookshop in Italy. It ranges from the latest non-fiction to militant feminist thought, from the latest Italian fiction to European literature classics in translation, via comics and children’s literature. What are the criteria behind the construction of the library catalogue?

The criteria behind the bookshop catalogue are very much related to the messages we want to bring to the community of readers of PIENA. In a time like ours, when you really only have to type in the title of a book to buy it in four seconds and it arrives at your doorstep the next day, we thought that in addition to books we had to bring a proposal. And so, again, a vision of worldviews that reflect us as people, because they are linked to the issues we hold most dear, such as anti-racism, inclusiveness or feminism. More simply, the books are chosen with the idea of offering readers possible keys to interpreting the contemporary world. Books can give you the possibility to read the world, read people, they are powerful tools.

Why is opening a bookshop not like opening any other business? 

No, opening a bookshop is not just starting a business, for the simple reason that along with books there are people. And so opening a bookshop is giving life to a space that will be traversed by people: let’s go back again to the idea of the neighbourhood, of the territory within which the bookshop exists. I believe that in our cities we need more spaces where people feel free to come in, have a chat, talk, find answers to their curiosity or, in any case, questions that are urgent in the contemporary world. A bookshop is a place where culture is made, not just sold as a cultural product.

And who are your customers? Can you briefly describe them to us?

Perhaps this was the most surprising and also rewarding aspect. Our clientele is very diverse, because Lisbon is a composite city on a human level. First of all, it is not only made up of Italians but at least 35% are Portuguese: it was nice to see that there is a lot of curiosity, a lot of openness, a lot of passion for Italian culture. Undoubtedly there is a strong cultural link between Italy and Portugal, just think that one of our most popular authors is Antonio Tabucchi, an Italian-Portuguese author, we can define him as such in many ways. Many of our clients are Italian students who do their Erasmus in Lisbon, but also Portuguese who did their Erasmus in Italy and want to keep alive their ties with the Italian language and culture. Then there are the young employees of large multinationals that have relocated to Portugal and many Italian university researchers who live and work here in Lisbon. They all gather around books, and in books, it seems to me, they find something that they miss, something that, inevitably, when you live between two countries, you miss. Books can also be home.

PIENA cares about people, then, and organises many meetings with its audience: presentations, workshops, reading groups, etc. What kind of response do you have in the flesh, in this time when everything is dominated by social, the virtual, the internet. Do people still like to participate? 

Yes, people still like to come, you just have to give them the chance. The fact that 20 or 30 people come to hear a book presentation in an Italian bookstore abroad, maybe on a Friday night, with the tiredness of a whole week on their shoulders, can only be a positive thing. For us, the online dimension is also important, because we like to be on social networks and use them as a means of communication, we are in any case daughters of our time.

And, in fact, you have opened an online shop, so that even those who do not physically reside in Lisbon can have access to PIENA’s books. How is it going?

It is going well. It allows us to also reach people who live in other parts of Portugal, but we have also shipped to Brazil and Germany. But it is not just about sending books: people write to us to ask for advice. There is an important human exchange.

Is interest in Italian books, and in general for Italian culture, growing in Portugal? 

I cannot say if it is growing, but I am sure there is a lot of interest in Italy and its culture. Those who dedicate themselves to studying the Italian language and culture almost always do it out of passion, and not out of duty. This results in a very pure, very beautiful and, above all, free motivation. In this regard, I believe that the Italian Cultural Institute in Lisbon, which has been present and active in the area for many years, has always played a key role. Moreover, right from the very beginning, we too have found in the Institute, in its director Stefano Scaramuzzino and in all its staff, attentive and helpful interlocutors, with whom a synergy was born that has allowed us to achieve great goals, despite the fact that PIENA is a very young and relatively small organisation. I am pleased to briefly mention the coming to Lisbon of the Strega Prize winner Mario Desiati in 2022, or Viola Ardone in 2023, two events organised by the IIC with the participation of PIENA, but also numerous meetings organised in bookshops with the support of the Institute. In short, for us it was fundamental to interface with the IIC, and to be able to do so while still feeling enthusiasm and mutual esteem was even better.

From your point of view as booksellers, what initiatives could Italy take to promote the sale of Italian books abroad? 

We need additional support, first of all logistical support, which would undoubtedly have a very positive impact on the sustainability of projects like ours. As Italian bookshops abroad, in fact, we cannot access the Italian distribution network and, therefore, cannot take advantage of the favourable conditions available domestically. We have to cope with both the disadvantage of high shipping costs and the fact that we cannot keep books on consignment because our suppliers do not accept returns. Everything you see at PIENA has already been purchased: if we do not sell it, the cost falls entirely on the bookshop.

We have chosen not to charge the end customer for shipping and to sell the books at the cover price, both to be able to at least compete with the big online retailers in this, and because we are aware that the standard of living in Portugal is currently lower than in other big European cities such as Berlin, Paris or Brussels. It is a gamble, of course, not to burden this cost on the end customer, so that they buy more books than they would if they cost more. Hopefully it will be a winner, but it would be nice to have more support from Italy for small publishing businesses abroad, like ours.

https://www.pienalibreria.com/