Hotels have always been welcoming to literature, and when they haven't, as happened to Stephen King in a disturbingly soulless hotel in Colorado, they lead to the unforgettable hotel in The Shining, where rooms are not unlocked with a card. magnetic but with axe. But in general the hotel industry has welcomed the authors very well. Ernest Hemingway said: "When I dream of the afterlife and paradise, I always find myself transplanted to the Ritz!".
Currently, in Barcelona, hotels such as Casa Fuster, one where more writers spend the night, or the Alma hotel, which hosts the massive Sant Jordi editorial party organized by this newspaper, are hotels that are friends with letters. In Madrid there is even one so baptized, Hotel de las Letras, with a vocation to always host all kinds of literary events.
I am writing these lines from the Le Meridien Ra hotel in front of Sant Salvador de El Vendrell beach, where the Transversal'22 literature conference is taking place this weekend, reaching its fifth edition with the presence of Agustín Fernández Mallo, Olga Merino or Jorge Carrion. An initiative of the tenacious literary activist José Luis Espina, who, not finding institutional support to bring the voice of literature to the territories of Carlos Barral, has found it in the management of this hotel of the Marriott chain.
The VP Hotels chain has signed a collaboration agreement with Ediciones Siruela and its managers state that "with this initiative, VP Hotels becomes an ambassador of reading, and at the same time Ediciones Siruela enters the world of tourism and travel". With the idea that people enjoy reading in hotel stays, they are going to carry out various actions and the first is going to be to leave a Siruela children's or youth book as a gift in each family room. The motto of this agreement, written on the bookmarks that will accompany the books, is that "each book is like a hotel, we live in it for a short but unforgettable time."
Some that have been doing these pairings since 2014 are those of the Hotusa group, which also sponsors the Eurostars Hotels Award for Travel Narrative. By the way, this year has been won by Manuel Moyano with a highly recommended trip through the Sierra Morena called La Frontera Interior. This hotel chain organizes its Wine sessions
The head of culture at Eurostars, Elena Jorreto, tells me that "the goal is to create a space for dialogue and reflection that brings authors and readers together." Javier Sierra , Susana Fortes , Santiago Posteguillo , Martí Gironell , Maria Oruña and Andrés Neuman have already passed through the halls of their hotels . This June Javier Cercas will be at the Eurostars Grand Marina in the port of Barcelona, but they already have full capacity!
Surely, the most lasting and international hotel and literary partnership is that of the Conversations and the Formentor Prize. The first International Formentor Prize went to Jorge Luis Borges: they denied him the Nobel but the Formentor Prize recognized his poetic talent with all fairness. After a long hiatus, already with the Barceló family (owner of the Barceló hotels) Simón Pedro Barceló had the personal commitment to resume the literary thread: Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, Javier Marías or Annie Ernaux have been awarded a prize endowed with 50,000 euros.
The Prize and the Conversations have recovered their itinerancy and this year, with the 2022 winner, the writer Liudmila Ulítskaya, they travel to the imposing Santa Catalina hotel in Gran Canaria. They have the patronage of the Barceló and Buadas families, organized by the Formentor Foundation under the baton of Basilio Baltasar, who will fill their elegant rooms next September with "satyrs, rogues and thugs", the motto of this edition, which wants to debate about the great liars of literature. It is stimulating that hotels, although they live off foreigners, seek to root themselves culturally in the territory that welcomes them
