The Most-Read Atlas in Villarrasa

In September, Villarrasa secondary school banned mobile phones throughout the premises. They are handed in on arrival and collected on the way out, from grey lockers the pupils have nicknamed “the graveyard”. Two months later, according to a press release from the school, the library has tripled its loans. “They’ve rediscovered paper,” the head teacher, Ramón Olmedo, declared. Lucía Ferrer, a reporter for El Eco del Valle, went to check with a notebook and a healthy dose of scepticism.

Pilar Casado has run the library for thirty years and can’t remember an autumn like it. She showed Lucía the records without hiding her bewilderment. October’s most borrowed title wasn’t a novel or a comic, but a 1998 World Atlas, with the borders of a world that no longer exists: two hundred and twelve loans in a month. In second place, a thesaurus weighing almost two kilos. “Look at the length of the loans,” Pilar added. “Twenty-two minutes on average.”