Montserrat Library (7th February 2011)

Not many people have the opportunity to see the library of the school and the monastery. It has over 350,000 books, excluding magazines, leaflets, videos and photos. It almost looks like an Oxford college library, with its carrels, wood panelling, creaky stairs and dingy corners.

You can find anything about anything, from fortresses during Charles V’s rule to Indian art in America to Japanese home utensils (not that any of those three appeal to many people, judging by their dusty state!)

There are small medieval manuscripts, with their golden, red and blue letters and thick yellowish paper. You can also find dark red books nearly one metre tall with pages as thick as card and covers about an inch thick, something I had never even imagined existed! 

The modern section of the library is impressive not so much by its collection, which is as spectacular as the rest of the library, but because of the electronic system which moves entire bookshelves sideways. Press a button on the wall, push a small lever a few inches and an entire shelf can move in almost any direction you want. You can shift ten bookcases at a time, which would probably weigh over two tonnes!

Its also nice to see some of my grandfather’s books there too. The library is not only full of religious material. In fact there is as much about astronomy, archaeology, German history and technology as there is about the Bible and about Catalan independence, which seem to be the two most influential subjects in Montserrat, for obvious reasons.

There are also the gremios (individual rooms dedicated to publishing, the study of the Bible [which in itself is one of the most studied subjects in Montserrat, which holds a very long history of Bible-analysing], philosophical study, deeply heated debating about Catalunya and its culture and politics, and so on). although these are still in use from time to time, they are normally empty, as most monks now devote their time to study in front of their laptops as most other human beings (I also heard that one monk in particular is a devoted COD aficionado!)