"The store is barely making a profit anymore, but I'm not closing it because I love it."
Fina Olives is the fourth generation to bring Can Candu to life, a clothing store in Alaior that is already 140 years old and refuses to die
CitadelFina Olivas is still going strong. At 68, she's the fourth generation to keep Can Candu alive, one of Menorca's oldest and most iconic businesses, along with Ca na Genera (Ferreries) and Ca n'Hernando (Ciutadella). Nearly 140 years later, it's surviving the onslaught of e-commerce. Her husband is ill at home, but every morning and evening, Fina heads to number 38 on the central Ramal street in Alaior to sell sheets, towels, and underwear to a loyal and large clientele. "And not just from Alaior. People from Mercadal and Migjorn Gran also come here to shop," she says. She laments that the recent traffic changes implemented by the City Council have reduced traffic in the town center, making it more difficult for customers from out of town to reach the shop and park nearby. "If they find the streets closed, it won't make things easy for me, because I'm barely scraping by with just the people from Alaior who come on foot."
"Actually," she admits, "I should close because what I make only covers expenses, and the profits are already meager." But if she doesn't, Fina says, "it's because I love it. Think about it: all of us siblings were born in this shop. My grandmother's father started it, my grandmother continued it, then my father, and I've been running it for 25 years. I have two granddaughters, 16 and 9 years old, and this one, especially, is too young, and I don't know what she'll do. In the meantime, I'm holding on, but it's true that things are getting bad."
However, the owner of Can Candu isn't afraid of the competition. The shop up the street, Dalia, "is more fashionable and geared towards young people. We don't sell the same products. What I have is more classic." And e-commerce isn't the enemy either. "Online shopping doesn't affect me much because older people haven't gotten used to it and prefer to come to the shops with their children and try on clothes in person. They're more old-fashioned."
Furthermore, having turned 65 has allowed her to significantly reduce her self-employment social security contributions, from over 300 euros per month to just 27. "Suddenly, I couldn't believe it," she says. So much so that "I had to go to the Social Security office to check."
Reorienting the business
Can Candu, named after the great-grandfather who founded the business, Alejandro, began as a grocery store. Fina recalls accompanying her father every morning as he drove around the area to collect the freshest milk. "We used to sell over 200 liters a day," she says. But as her father got older, "running a grocery store became too much of a burden." Moreover, "a supermarket opened right next door," and they couldn't compete anymore. So the family decided to shift their focus to textiles, household goods, and clothing, "which has much more convenient and manageable hours." When Fina's father turned 85, he sold her the business, which she has kept unchanged. Even the shop window and interior furnishings are the same as they were in the beginning.
But if the business has been open for so many years, it's primarily thanks to its customers, who in the harshest postwar years "paid when they could," which helped many families in the village survive economically during such a time of hardship. Fina's family is very well-liked in Alaior, and this means that, especially in the evenings, some neighbors visit just to chat and discuss the latest news from the village. "But they're very respectful, you know! If someone comes in to buy something, they step out for a moment and let the customer browse at their leisure."
Of course, things have been more complicated at home lately. "I won't be opening today," says Fina, who will have to spend the afternoon at the doctor's with her husband, convinced that "no one will complain anyway. People in Alaior know me well enough to know they can easily come tomorrow mid-morning and find me."
At the end of the year, a traditional shoe and rope shop in Alaior, Can Sabater Pagès, closed its doors after more than 70 years of service for three generations. Following her mother's death, Marga Riudavets decided to shut down the business, one of only two in the village that still sold footwear.
His grandfather, known as "Es zapatero campesino" (The Peasant Shoemaker ), had opened the shop after leaving farming to become a shoemaker in the village. He even founded the Riudavets brand of traditional footwear, which, like the shop, has now become a thing of the past.
In fact, the footwear sector is one of the hardest hit in Menorca by the lack of generational succession. Economist Alfons Riera, who has researched the survival of historic businesses in the Balearic Islands, confirms this. After bakeries and pastry shops, small shoe manufacturers, hardware stores, and clothing stores are the businesses that have closed the most during the last quarter of a century.
So much so that the footwear industry association has repeatedly asked the government to launch training initiatives that encourage young people to pursue careers in the sector. This repeated request has been successful, and for the second year running, the Josep Maria Quadrado Institute in Ciutadella will offer the basic vocational training course in textiles and footwear. Currently, five students are enrolled in the first year and another six in the second.
