A year ahead of schedule, the International Book Fair (FIL) in Guadalajara (Mexico), the largest in the world in the Spanish language, has recovered its pre-pandemic numbers, but not only that, it has broken all its records, with 857,315 attendees who have spread throughout the nine days that the event lasts, an inimitable mix of a professional book fair with a massive cultural festival that is expanding its tentacles every time (to give us an idea, only the FIL Pensamiento, its intellectual festival, 266 thinkers from all over the world have attended, several of them top-notch, and this is not the main line of programming).
The first FIL without the presence of its founder, Raúl Padilla, who died last April, has ended with resounding success, breaking the mark of 828,266 attendees in 2019. It will hardly be possible to surpass much more, given that the fair already occupies the entire of the Expo Guadalajara site (43,000 square meters) and this year there have been real crowds of people at rush hours.
At the ceremony of the passing of the baton (‘change of baton’, they call it here) from the European Union to Spain, as guest of honor for 2024, the ministry’s brand new Secretary of State for Culture, Jordi Martí, took the floor, who performed a call for peace: “Here we put the vaccine to the war, which continues knocking at the door of our continent, in Ukraine and in the Gaza Strip”, and cried: “We are going to raise a cry for peace from the of culture, without fissures, without palliatives. While today here we celebrate diversity, bombs fall and kill boys, kill girls,” he said before the general director of the Book, María José Gálvez.
Marisol Schulz, general director of the contest, explained – in an interview with La Vanguardia in her office – shortly before the closing, that the fights with some politicians that the FIL has suffered are “a consequence of the fact that we are part of a public university, who is the one who organizes the fair, and the university questions everything, including power. And there are parts of power that do not like to be questioned.” If last year it was the governor of Jalisco, Emilio Alfaro, who instigated a protest demonstration at the gates of the venue, now it has been the Mexican president, the populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has called the FIL a “conclave of the right”, an accusation impossible to sustain looking at his program of events. “Please! –exclaims Schulz– This year we have had Ada Colau, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas –the historical leader of the Mexican left–, Rita Maestre, Joan Subirats… I do not understand why the president spreads false ideas that spread through social networks . If you start crossing out everything that is not right-wing in our program, you will see that there is very little program left, but politics is not the fundamental thing about this fair either, we cannot be labeled in those parameters, we seek debate between different opinions ”. Financial autonomy also stands out, since the FIL balances income and expenses (also this year) despite the fact that it has not received subsidies from the Mexican government for four years: “Our model is to be autonomous in that as well.”
The last time Spain was a guest of honor was in 2000. ”I was an editor – from the Santillana group, Schulz remembers – and a whole generation of writers came, I brought Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Manuel Vicent, J.J. Thousands… almost all of them are still there. But the average age of our visitor is 25 years old and those kids, in 2000, didn’t even come to the children’s activities. The FIL and Spain are different and it is a new opportunity.”
In 2025, the guest will be Barcelona. After Spain?, some will ask. “Of course,” he answers. It is an idea that we have been pursuing for many years. Barcelona is the literary capital where a very important current of Latin American literature emerges, the boom, it is the great literary capital of Spain and Latin America at certain times. As such we invite you, it is to do justice to what it has been and what it may continue to be. In terms of the cultural industry and culturally it makes a lot of sense to focus on Barcelona for a year.”
Will the FIL influence the Spanish and Barcelona programs? “We participate by suggesting and encouraging,” he answers, “we accompany the guest, but the final decision is his.” Schulz highlights the power of the Catalan exile in Mexico, “which caused a large number of magazines and books to be printed in Catalan in this country when it was prohibited in Spain.”
The FIL is a much more joyful fair than the one in Frankfurt (the only one in the world that exceeds it in size), with an extensive program of celebrations, concerts, exhibitions and even gastronomy. This year, TikTok was present for the first time and the comic room – “without costumes or merchandising, just with books,” highlights Schulz – has acquired a great dimension.
After five o’clock this morning (Spanish time), the Catalan Sílvia Pérez Cruz and the Canarian Valeria Castro finished their joint concert, which was in charge of ending the FIL 2023. The best image of the contest, however, is the pile of people, of all ages and conditions, who have accumulated, day after day, reading in the most unlikely places in its crowded hallways.
