This is another significant milestone for the city, as FIL is one of the leading book fairs worldwide, the second largest for business turnover after the Frankfurt Book Fair. It is a meeting point for the cultural industry in the Spanish language, the most prominent cultural event in Ibero-America. Its literary festival, which is held during the nine days of the book fair, is the biggest in the world. Around 750 authors from 49 different countries come to participate, in addition to more than 2,000 publishers, and over 3,000 activities are organised. The presence of professionals is important with about 20,000 in attendance, but the participation of the public is possibly the most impressive: in 2024, it broke its own record with more than 900,000 visitors.

Barcelona at FIL: Flowers will come

From 29 November to 7 December, Barcelona will present its own programme that will interact with the FIL programme with the aim of building awareness about literary Barcelona: a city that is a publishing capital of authors in both the Catalan and Spanish languages, and an undisputed leader in the Latin American market.

We celebrate books every day through a unique network of libraries and bookshops, an authentic cultural fabric of Barcelona. It is the headquarters of the biggest publishers and a constantly growing breeding ground for independent publishers, both big and small, as well as literary agencies, printers, distributors, translators, editors, and so on. The book sector plays a very important role in the city.

It should be pointed out that the presence of Barcelona at FIL is a unique opportunity to explain the city from many other spheres that also form part of the book fair. There will be some notable participants from Barcelona at FIL Ciencia and FIL Pensamiento. Design continues to be a cutting-edge and distinctive feature of the city and this will be reflected in various aspects of our participation, from the pavilion to the exhibitions, where recent digital artistic experiences will be displayed. Every day, we will fill the FIL with music and performing arts, with performers and shows also established in Mexico and others yet to be discovered. In Catalonia, we have our own film academy and Catalan productions travel around the world, as they will to Guadalajara too.

And to represents us there, we have picked the best ambassador possible: Mercè Rodoreda. Our slogan, “The flowers will come” (Vindran les flors) is a fragment from one of her stories: flowers as a link with Guadalajara, known as the “city of roses”, and as a symbol of Sant Jordi’s Day. Literature in Barcelona is blooming, like the flowers, and there is no stop to it. We also find the idea of cycle, of relief, in flowers, which can explain Barcelona’s relationship with literature and Mexico: from the years of exile when Mexico was a welcoming land for Catalan writers, to the literary boom when Barcelona was full of Latin American literature. As guest of honour, Barcelona wants to tell these and many other stories. And we will do, loaded with flowers.