The FIL has exploded. The largest publishing event in the world in Spanish – with more than 800,000 visitors and 2,000 publishers from 50 countries – started last Saturday in Guadalajara (Mexico) with the European Union as the guest of honor. As the high representative of the EU Josep Borrell said he felt, in a video message, when he enters a bookstore – tiny, faced with the infinite number of books he will never be able to read – this is how anyone who tries to cover this enormous program of events recognizes himself – for example, 630 book presentations – where those aimed at the public compete with professional events that outline the future of the sector.
The European Union, in the words of its ambassador in Mexico, the Frenchman Gautier Mignot, is made up here of “27 1 countries”, that is, its member states and Ukraine, treated for all purposes as one of the family, with two authors, Andréi Kurkov and Haska Shyyan who are part of the delegation of 75 writers (and 150 artists) from all EU countries. The Spanish are María Dueñas, Care Santos, Berta Dávila and Karmele Jaio, one per language, since the EU claims to be “a region where 24 languages coexist.”
A sector of the Mexican public and press regret the absence of big names when Europe is the area of the world, for example, with the highest concentration of Nobel Prize winners, but the organizers have fled the star system. They argue that what it was about was “to make known literature and authors that are not so well known, to show young people who in the future will win the Nobel Prize,” in the words of Mignot. Among the 75 guests, fifteen are not even translated into Spanish but there are also names as established as the Irish Colm Tóibín, the Danish Janne Teller, the Frenchman David Foenkinos or the Romanian Tatiana Tibuleac. Mignot affirms that “the main criterion has been quality, not reputation or sales.”
For now, the big star is being absent. The Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina (1986-2023), who died last July after receiving shrapnel from a Russian missile that exploded in the Kramatorsk pizzeria where she was, had confirmed her attendance at this FIL. On the same day and time scheduled for the presentation of her novel A Home for Dom, a tribute was held - with her chair empty -, in which the Colombian Héctor Abad Faciolince, who accompanied her at the time of the events, revealed details of the tragic moment: “We were with her, the brave journalist from La Vanguardia Catalina Gómez Ángel and the mediator Sergio Jaramillo, and with the translator, sitting at a table on the terrace. I ordered a four cheese pizza; and she, a non-alcoholic beer. Because I was deaf in my right ear and couldn't hear Jaramillo well, I changed seats and Victoria took mine. Jaramillo took out a bottle of whiskey that he had and served as a cover for us in the local glasses. At the moment of toasting, an Iskander missile – which costs 4.5 million dollars – exploded, a shrapnel from that bomb entered the back of her skull, she lost consciousness and died a few days later. I can't help but think that that bomb would have killed me if I hadn't moved. "I feel the immense responsibility of having unfairly given my place to someone my daughter's age."
The FIL waits for next year, 2024, when Spain will be the guest, to recover its pre-pandemic numbers. The following year, in 2025, the guest will be Barcelona and, therefore, these days, taking good note of everything, and meeting above what is humanly acceptable, there is a delegation from the city, headed by the Councilor for Culture, Xavier Marcé – who is accompanied by the journalist Anna Guitart – and Miquel Rodríguez, economic promotion manager of the city council.
“In addition to the editorial program –explains Marcé–, which is fundamental, we want Barcelona to be well present in the areas of thought and science. Our intention is, also, that the night shows, the film festival and the design of the pavilion itself include fundamental actors of the city, for example the Sónar, the Taller de Músics, the FAD or the ESCAC, to name a few.
Marcé met the Minister of Culture, Natàlia Garriga, next to the EU pavilion, which, designed by External Reference as an agora of 1,130 square meters, with 100% recyclable materials, and no plastic or paper, is inspired by the Bauhaus movement. In front of him, a group of activists demonstrated accusing Europe of “complicity with the Palestinian genocide.” The Chilean Patricio Jeretic, commissioner of the EU program, recapitulates the principles of his mission: “Diversity, not only linguistics but of genders, generations and disciplines. Also tolerance and freedom of expression. Ecological sustainability. And the defense of democracy.” In general, “Mexico has the US very close, it consumes little European culture.”
A world passes through the corridors of the FIL. We greet Gonzalo García Barcha, editor and son of García Márquez, who participates in the meetings of the Julio Cortázar chair. Before, another editor, the Argentine Daniel Divinsky, filled the largest room of the fair to talk about Mafalda, the character who saved the finances of his publishing house. And, in another room, Juan Villoro was talking about The dark side of the moon, the legendary Pink Floyd album. Outside, at the entrance, a group of women installed posters and banners with the photos and names and surnames of their ex-husbands who do not pay the pension that corresponds to them (detailing the debt and the consequences), in a massive outing movement that runs through the whole country.
Héctor Abad Faciolince remembered a phrase by Victoria Amelina: “Stories must be saved no matter what, even if it is by jumping from an almost dead body to a living body.” This is what happens, every day, at the FIL in Guadalajara.
