A cultural initiative that grows and grows

San Fernando/The 2024 San Fernando Book Fair closes with a good balance. The scheduled activities have had the interest of the public, from book presentations and talks with authors, to children’s proposals. Some of the bookstores present show their satisfaction with an initiative that grows every year.

“The Book Fair is taking an important turn. More and more people are coming, national-level writers are coming, which is an attraction for more to come. The site helps, how it is set up. People like to have authors sign their books,” highlights Cristina García Guaita, manager of the Bozano bookstore, which has not missed this event since the first edition. She also points to the presence of more bookstores, “each one brings his books, generates more atmosphere”.

The Bibliopola bookstore has been coming to the San Fernando Book Fair for eleven years, so Ana Belén Mota can also provide a perspective of the changes and their results. “Every year it grows more, it has more impact, is becoming a referencein one of the best fairs in the Bay,” he comments. This is helped by the group of national authors who attend. “Let’s see if any international ones also come,” he proposes. Also the increase in bookstores, which the fair “every year is surpassed”, which abounds in business benefits.

For David López, from Rita’s Bookshop, being at the Book Fair has been “a very good experience.” They are newbies to large fairs, because they have only been open (in Camposoto) for 9 months “and everything is new, exciting.” He doesn’t have the background that allows him to evaluate the impact on the business, but “from an emotional point of view, creating this synergy, this agora of culture, is fantastic“. “We talk about books, the ones we like, small debates are created. We are delighted,” he summarizes. Of course, the event has allowed them to make themselves known given that they are not in the center but in a neighborhood on the outskirts, “new people have come, it was important to talk about our bookstore.” But, he admits, that “we are excited that people from the neighborhood come here and come here exclusively to see Cristina and me.”

Booksellers recognize the good time that the paper book lives, again, to which the improvements in the editions, their care, their covers, the special editions contribute. Everything is trending, when a great cover comes out, other books follow that line. It is important, because the reader already recognizes from the cover the type of literature it is,” says Mota, specifically about the youth book. “Everything is being transformed, the books are becoming more attractive, the special editions attract attention, more is being read,” says López.

The push of the youth public

From Bozano, Cristina García Guaita highlights the push of youth literature. “Children’s books have always been important, there is a large audience here, but the youth audience is spectacular,” she clarifies. The proof, she adds, is the expectation for the presence of Inma Rubiales. Indeed, the young writer from Extremadura shared a talk on Saturday with Julia Guerrero for the presentation of All the places we kept secret, his latest work. It was the last stop on the tour that the author has been on for months. She will now take a break and she will return to writing. Before her, however, she signed copies for a long line of young people who waited for her turn for hours.

“We, although we carry everything, are specialized in youth, fantasy books, and it is brutal. It hit hard. Young people are reading, they have found a great variety and the appropriate reading for each one, where they can take refuge,” says Ana Belén Pola from the Bibliopola bookstore.

At Rita’s Bookshop they of course have this youth literature, manga, “because they ask us for it.” But also “There are young people who see books that they had not seen beforeas Sun Tzu’s Art of War in a special and bilingual edition, The book of five rings, Aesop’s fables, The odyssey, King Arthur, Mobby Dick, The Quijote”. Young customers really like the graphic novel.

In general, these booksellers make it clear, The book is having a good time with interest in all audiences. “We believe that books find you. We have books for everyone: children’s literature because we are in the Plaza de las Alegrías where there are many small children and they ask us for many children’s stories, that is why we do storytelling, workshops. We also work on youth books “The older ones come looking for history and philosophy,” explains David López. “The paper book, due to the push of young people, the strength of the children’s audience and the interest of adults, is becoming important again,” concludes García Guaita.

The last day

The last day was attended by Inma Rubiales, also by Daniel Fopiani who presented his new book, The lineage of the stars. The writer Jesus Carrasco spoke with journalist Tamara García about her novel Praise of the handsan autofiction with a lot of biography, of personal moments used as creative material, a use that has limits, “do not cross the lines of privacy“.

Carrasco described this work, like his previous work, as a “domestic novel”, due to its attention to detail, to the invisible, to the everyday. The novels, he admitted, are made of “extraordinary things”, but he is increasingly interested in the close look, the look at close things, the importance of memory and identity. There is no possibility of a future without attention to memory, to the past, he considers, although, he made it clear that, it is not at all nostalgic. He feels like a “man of progress”, but always with the past present that helps “build identity.”

Although in Praise of the hands deals sideways with the issue of touristification, the writer responded without hesitation to the question that the host asked him about this matter and opined that mass tourism destroys the identity of cities, something that I warned is happening in Cádiz as well. He escapes to this city whenever he can during Carnival, the most interesting, most important popular festival, which fascinates him because it plays with the word from a playful point of view.

In the talk they also stopped at the soul of the novel: manual labor, which the author praises, within a proposal for care, for life stopped, calm, contemplation, and for resistance. As Tamara García points out “it is a song to the resistance against the current productive system, to the dictatorship of the clocks, a position in the face of the acceleration with which we live.”

Tributes

The 2024 Book Fair has been dedicated to the Bozano bookstore for its centenary. The first day, which was inaugurated with the activist Lydia Cacho, there was a special tribute that included Paco García Barroso and Juan Manuel Fernández, from the Manuel de Falla bookstore, recently retired, in which both defended the business, both for the effort it has taken to overcome difficult moments but also for its particularity, “We don’t sell things. We sell culture”pointed out the soul of the Bozano bookstore.

This year the cultural event also featured another tribute, to Miguel Hernández, with the staging of an adaptation of the podcast about the poet made by journalist Pedro Espinosa. Carmen Alemany intervened, who was in charge of cataloging the more than 5,000 objects (including many manuscripts) that the Provincial Council of Jaén acquired from the writer in 2013. The professor made several observations about the work of the Alicante native to remove the image that is offered of him as an “intuitive poet.” “In the Anthology they see the definitive poem, but In the writings of Miguel Hernández you can discover how he meticulously builds itthe elaboration projects, although we see the final result as natural,” he explained.

Juan José Téllez, curator of the exhibition Miguel Hernández, in full light, which takes advantage of this legacy, explained how it tried to give a “spectacle dimension” to the archive, which highlighted the conservation – in worse or better condition – of the writer’s texts, but also the photographs. Miguel Hernández was shown in a swimsuit, a soccer player, extravagant, from his religious dimension to his communist transformation.

Both recognized the figure of his wife, Josefina Manresa, who took the papers with his writings from the milkmaid that took her husband to prison, “which allowed many of his poems to be saved,” which he kept to prevent his work from being eradicated. “She is the guardian of her legacy, with the search for hiding places so that this heritage would remain intact; the defender of ideas that she did not share, at least at the beginning,” Téllez mentioned.

The actors Ángel Quiñones, Susana Rosado and José Luis Suárez also participated in the event, and the musician Benji Montoya, who provided the podcast’s soundtrack. Also A fragment of the recording that exists with the poet’s voice was heard reciting.