It's in Rua de Aviz that we find Moreira da Costa, the oldest bookshop in Porto. It was founded in 1902 by José Moreira da Costa, Elisa Duarte's father. In 1927, she took over the reins of the business and changed the name to "Moreira da Costa (Filha)", whose signs are still clearly visible in the two shop windows. It became a place where intellectuals and scholars gathered for heated gatherings. In 1952, to mark the bookshop's 50th anniversary, Elisa decided to make a facsimile edition of 50 copies of A Infanta Capelista, the "cursed novel" by Camilo Castelo Branco. This is a work that the writer had destroyed in 1872, when it was already in print.

In 1958, Elisa was sentenced to six months in prison by a descendant of the writer. By paying a daily fine of 30 escudos, she managed to get out of prison. Considered an illegal edition, Moreira da Costa's version of the Camillian novel became valuable. Today, a copy costs at least 600 euros.

But how does Elisa Duarte manage to reproduce the work that Camilo had destroyed? When the writer had the edition stopped, the sheets were already printed and were given a new function: wrapping paper in a grocery shop in downtown Porto. One of the shopkeepers realised that the sheets contained a literary text and managed to collect the corresponding sheets for a copy. It was this volume that came into the hands of Elisa Duarte, thanks to one of the regulars, Henrique Rodrigues Vieira, who encouraged her to make the facsimile edition.

"Of the 50 copies published, my great-grandmother sold 37. After the sentence, she hid 10 copies, which we were only able to find 40 years later," says great-grandson Miguel Carneiro. He and his wife, Susana Fernandes, run Moreira da Costa. Today, the bookshop is home to more than 30,000 books and magazines, a veritable cathedral of books.