On Puerta del Sol in Madrid, between souvenir shops and fast food counters, there is a store that has been trading for 203 years. Inside, someone still paints fans by hand - literally by hand, literally with paint, literally one at a time.

Casa de Diego opened in 1801 on Calle del Carmen, and since 1858 it has stood at its present address. The floor is original, except for the section rebuilt after a bomb fell on it during the Civil War. That is one way to measure the history of a small business: not by logos and redesigns, but by what it survived.

It is now run by brothers Arturo and Javier Llerandi, the sixth generation. „This is something sentimental. Being here is like being at home, because I learned it from my father, from my grandfather”, Arturo says. Then he adds a line that says more than any marketing strategy: „It is an honour to be the sixth generation alongside my brother, and the seventh is already here, helping.”

The workshop holds fans from around 1850 that belonged to European names. The best-known story is the wedding gift for Diana Spencer in 1981 - a fan in a wood shade, made only for her. „The fan we designed for Lady Di was a unique piece”, Arturo says. Queen Letizia, meanwhile, carried a fan from this house at her wedding to Felipe in 2004.

The new collection is not a fan but a bag - hand-drawn leather and textile, with a small purse in the set, and the first model is called Carmen, after Arturo's grandmother and mother. It is an old trick that rarely fails: when your craft is two centuries old, you do not need to invent a new name, you simply take one from your own family.

The strongest thing in the whole conversation is not the royal list. It is this: „If nobody carries it on, the craft disappears... This is a calling. If you are happy while you make things, you really are a millionaire.”

That sentence is worth reading twice in a region where craft shops close quietly one by one, replaced by a café or a currency exchange. Nobody issues an announcement when a trade dies. One day you simply notice there is no longer anyone to take something to for repair.

Arturo has one more ambition - to put a fan in the hands of Princess Leonor. „It would be an honour for us, always, and for whatever she might need from us.” A shop that has sold to queens for two centuries, and is still waiting for an invitation. That is a modesty money does not buy.