La Libre is an alternative bookshop and self-managed social centre on Rampa de Sotileza, up the hill from the middle of Santander. It has been going since 2001. The shelves lean towards feminism, anti-racism, prison abolition, ecology and anarchism, and it will order anything else you ask for. There is a collective lending library at the back and a screen-printing workshop that turns out shirts and patches.
The room behind the shop is about a hundred square metres and it is the reason the place matters beyond its stock. Local collectives use it for their own assemblies and open sessions, and the programme runs to book presentations, talks, film screenings, small exhibitions and the occasional concert, several nights most weeks.
Queer use of that room is regular rather than occasional. Las Quimas, a collective of lesbian, bisexual and trans women, holds its reading club here and it is open to LBT women of any age, and books on queer theory and bisexual politics turn up among the presentations. In 2026 the Cantabrian LGBTI+ association gave La Libre its annual Aleguita award for the space it has built for social and cultural groups in the city.
It is run as a non-profit by an assembly of volunteers and takes no public money, which is worth knowing before you walk in expecting a shop and find a meeting.
The people in this picture are AI-generated.
