The 83rd Madrid Book Fair ended on June 16, 2024 with three important news:
- sales of books could exceed ten million euros, taking into account that in the middle of the day the figure reached 5.5 million, which shows the good moment of the publishing industry;
- The influx It exceeded six hundred thousand visitors, which renews the romance between the fair and Spanish readers, since forty percent are from outside the Community of Madrid;
- NY will be the protagonist of the 2025 edition, especially with the authors who live there and write in Spanish.
The American city, a cultural and avant-garde symbol of the 20th and 21st centuries, will be the focus of the next event, from May 30 to June 15, 2025. “New York will illuminate the Fair and will do so in unexpected ways. The colleagues of the FILNYC, our land grab on the other side of the sea, have managed to federate the Departments of Latin American Studies of several universities, plus the Brooklyn Book Fair and the Pen Club,” explained Eva Orúe, director of the Fair. Madrid. He added that with all of them, the fair hopes to show what that city writes in Spanish, “build bridges between authors from here and there, and we will go further by attracting New York authors in English who already have many loyal readers in Spain.” .
The project for the 84th edition of the fair is in collaboration with the Institute of Mexican Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY), organizer of the New York Book Fair (FILNYC). The fair and the Institute of Mexican Studies have already reached agreements with the Departments of Latin American Studies of the Universities of Brown, Columbia, Fordham, New York University, Cornell and Yale to bring a delegation of researchers and professors from these universities. In addition, negotiations are being held with Princeton and Harvard Universities, which have shown a willingness to participate.
The New York side is going to organize around twenty activities. The objective, according to Dejanira Álvarez, director of the New York City International Book Fair, is to bring “the most complete representation possible that reflects the aesthetic and cultural diversity of New York, through the participation of a selection of writers, and artists from different diasporas and profiles, both established and emerging.” Among the writers who have joined this project are the Dominican Rita Indiana and the Mexican Brenda Navarro. For the first, “Spanish is a symbol of resistance.” According to the Mexican writer, “with all the contradictions that New York has, there are very important spaces for the book.”
According to José Higuera, director of the CUNY Mexican Institute, it is “an alliance that underlines the importance of cultural and literary exchanges between two of the most vibrant metropolises in the world.” According to Eva Orúe: “We build a bridge, we only have to cross it and invite visitors to the Fair to do it with us.”
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