Boutique de la Prensa

Sell only what's worth selling, never chasing a passing trend: that's the standard Antonio Torán and his wife, Margarita Martín, have applied at Boutique de la Prensa ever since a photographer and a stylist, two clients from the fashion world, began asking them for publications impossible to find in Madrid. Torán started importing them, and that's how the direction that defines the shop today took shape. It all began in 1998, with a small ten-square-meter kiosk in Chamberí, a conventional newsstand like so many others. Eleven years later it moved to its current location, where it finally found its true path: specializing in magazines that almost no one distributed in Spain.

It all began with two clients from the fashion world — a photographer and a stylist — who were looking for publications unavailable in Madrid. Torán began importing them, and from that initiative emerged the philosophy that defines the shop today: only selling what he and his wife, Margarita Martín, genuinely believe is worth discovering, never following passing trends.

What makes the Boutique unique is not its quantity, but the rarity of its collection of more than five hundred international titles. Among its treasures is a hand-decorated edition of Vogue Portugal embellished with crystals, with only one hundred copies in existence worldwide. They also consider Acne Paper, the culture and fashion magazine by Acne Studios, one of the most carefully curated publications ever to have occupied their shelves.

They passionately champion Marfa, inspired by the artistic town of the same name in Texas, as well as Candy, the groundbreaking magazine by Luis Venegas, which often sells out before it even reaches stores. Apartamento, the Spanish interiors publication founded in Barcelona that has gone on to influence design culture worldwide, is another of their favourites.

The Boutique’s clientele is as diverse as its shelves: local residents who continue to buy their daily newspaper, fashion and design students, professional photographers and makeup artists, and a younger generation that has turned the consumption of printed matter into a way of distinguishing themselves from the digital world.

Many customers arrive through recommendations; others come because a professor or friend told them about a place in Madrid that seemed almost impossible to find until they discovered it. What Torán hopes every visitor takes away, beyond any individual magazine, is the belief that paper has found new relevance in the place where it was least expected: among younger generations, those who once seemed destined to abandon it completely.