Jim Dunlap opened the shop in 1980.

One of the nation’s few Spanish-language bookstores hides in plain sight among art galleries, clothing stores and restaurants off the Santa Fe Plaza. Tourists and locals walking along West San Francisco Street can easily miss the second-floor shop where Jim Dunlap holds forth among wooden shelves filled with Latin American literature, history and art books, CDs and tapes of obscure regional folk music, and other items that reflect his interests.

The tall, thin 77-year-old with graying hair and mustache was born in Washington, D.C. But after dropping out of George Washington University, he spent a dozen years as a young American in Mexico City. There he became fluent in Spanish and got hooked on Latin American novels.

“I just wanted to read a book in Spanish,” Dunlap explains when asked why he opened the Allá bookstore 35 years ago.

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