Firstly, for our non-native-English speakers, a phone box is a British term for a small cabin with a public telephone inside. In the UK they were red.
Anyway, this is about a phone box in Alpujarra de la Sierra, which is a small village with until recently, a disused cabina telefónica. The Mayor, José Antonio Gómez, had the idea of converting it into an exchange library; you pick up a book; you leave one behind in its place.
The idea caught on so he has requested a dozen more from Telefónica so that hamlets that are municipal dependencies of the Town Hall can have the same, namely Mecina Bombarón, Yegen, El Golco, and Montenegro. Montenegro has six of the approximately 900 inhabitants of Alpujarra de la Sierra.
In 1990, Telefónica had 42,000 phone boxes scattered around Spain, three of which were in Alpujarra de la Sierra, with only one remaining there, which is situated in the Town Hall Square in Mecina Bombarón.
The 67-year-old Mayor, a retired doctor, started off life as a typesetter; hence his love of books. Yegen also had a very famous author living there in the 1920s; Gerald Brenan, author of South of Granada.
(News/Noticias: Alpujarra de la Sierra, Alpujarra, Granada, Andalucia – Photo & Source: José Antonio Guerrero/Ideal
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