Speech by Amadeu Barbany Grau, 4th generation shopkeeper and co-founder of IAIOS at the La Porxada Awards in Granollers in 2019.

As a merchant, I have to tell you that I often find myself lost. I wonder, "What am I? What do I do? What's my name?"

What's our business called? Traditional business? Small business? Neighborhood business? Business in danger of extinction?

One day I was so lost that I picked up a dictionary. A dictionary is a thick book we keep on a dusty shelf, and when you open it, you find the meanings of words. The first one I looked up was *botiguer,* and the definition read: "A person who runs a shop." I thought, "We're in trouble." (*The word "botiguer" in Catalan can be translated into Spanish as shopkeeper or merchant.)

I continued reading, and the second definition said that a botiguer was a bird. I thought; that sounds good! Apparently, a "botiguer" is a small bird that usually lives on the banks, on the banks of rivers, and is always very alert. It sits high on a branch in a privileged position... And every now and then, the bird darts into the river and catches a customer—I mean, a little fish.

Upon further investigation, I discovered that people used to call this bird "botiguer" because it's one of the most colorful in Catalonia. It's a bird with a large head and a small tail, and from the back, it looks like it's wearing a blue coat. Apparently, merchants used to wear blue coats, and that's how I discovered the origin of the name.

Since I wasn't entirely satisfied, I decided to look up the meaning of the word "commerce," and it reads as follows: the buying and selling of natural, industrial, and/or service products. Personally, I didn't like this definition very much; I found it too brief and cold.

But I finally found one I liked better! It read like this: Commerce: The exchange of ideas and feelings between people.

I immediately thought: This is our definition! It's what we shopkeepers have been doing for centuries and centuries.

I'd like to tell you a little anecdote, if you'll allow me. Shortly before the Neolithic, there were three very clever sisters. One day, the eldest sister, named "Come on, come on," decided to plant a seed and harvested a good crop. This harvest created a surplus, and thus, unknowingly, set in motion the Neolithic revolution. The second sister, named "Now I'll come," collected the surplus production and took it to a crossroads to sell it, unknowingly starting the trade revolution. When the younger sister, named "I'll stay here," arrived, the origin of cities took place.

As you all know, most cities in Catalonia and the rest of Europe were founded and grew around crossroads. Trade has been, from the very beginning, the backbone of our cities.

At these crossroads, our definition of trade was put into practice daily. Multiple exchanges of ideas and feelings took place. As time passed, this exchange continued to be practiced by the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans, as well as by the barbarians and Arabs... all these people were the merchants of the time, carrying much more than just goods. They told stories, discussed advances, technical and scientific discoveries, and spoke different languages. For this reason, we know today that trade made possible great advances such as the alphabet, navigation, and currency.

For all of this, I'd like to emphasize that commerce hasn't just been an economic phenomenon. It's been a space for the exchange of ideas and feelings, for relationships, for sharing, and that together we've built each of our cities. So, what happens when a business closes? Well, an entire network of relationships woven over the years disappears. It's a huge shame...

Lately, I've been walking around different cities and seeing their commercial past and the life they once had, and now they're practically commuter towns. This isn't the case in Granollers, but in Granollers we have another problem, like many other cities, which is the "cloning" of commerce. We're losing the desire to go from one city to another because practically all of them have the same stores. And this cloning is spreading to foreign cities like Paris or London and all over Europe. And who's to blame for all this? The big companies? The city councils? The government? The politicians? ... I'd say it's largely our fault.

We have the world we consume. Often, the shopkeepers themselves don't buy from small businesses. It turns out we all go to 20 companies we all know, and they decide for us the world we "don't want."

A while ago I was giving a talk at the University of Girona and in front of about 60 students I asked them a question: tell me a store here in Girona where you sell