More than half a million people have visited the Madrid Book Fair in its first 10 days

More than 550,000 people have passed through the 83rd Madrid Book Fair in the first ten days, which concludes today, according to a first provisional balance made this Sunday by its director, Eva Orúe. The official data will be announced next Thursday, June 20, since the attendance and sales figures for this last week are missing. More than half of the visitors come from Madrid and the rest are distributed among other autonomous communities and foreigners. It should be noted that this figure does not include those under 18 years of age.

«From May 31 to last Sunday the 9th, we have already received more than 550,000 unique visitors. It must be taken into account that on days 3 and 6, the weather alerts seriously altered the functioning of the fair, and even though the exhibitors and visitors were here,” Orue detailed, in relation to the three orange alert episodes that They influenced the start of the cultural event.

Until 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 9, the sales figure amounted to 5,580,000 euros, half of the nearly 11.2 million that were invoiced last year at a fair marked then by bad weather, since It rained twelve of the 17 days it lasted.

«In the absence of definitive data, that is, adding attendees and sales from the last week, I think we can be satisfied. Despite the weather disturbances, the alerts that forced us to change opening hours and scheduled events on the fly, the public has filled the El Retiro Paseo de Coches for another year. And to this general satisfaction is added the confirmation of an intuition: more and more people are visiting us from neighboring communities but also from distant countries,” he noted.

Orúe has commented that the data has been provided by a study that does not count those under 18 years of age, which is why he believes that “not all the hundreds or even thousands of children who have come to the fair’s activities are there.” which this year has been dedicated to sports.

Dedicated to New York

On the other hand, the Madrid Book Fair of 2025, which will be its 84th edition, will be centered in New York, according to the director. “In 2025, New York will light up the Book Fair,” said Orúe, who revealed that they will also have the participation of the Latin American studies departments of Brown University, Columbia University, Fordham University, Yale, Cornell, plus help from the Brooklyn Book Fair, Harvard University, and Princeton.

«New York will illuminate the Fair and will do so in unexpected ways. The colleagues of the New York International Book Fair, our landing on the other side of the sea, have managed to federate the Latin American Studies Departments of several universities, plus the Brooklyn Book Fair and the Pen Club. With all of them, we will be able 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,” said the director.