The Madrid Book Fair will have an ‘Olympic day’ during the celebration of its 83rd edition, which will take place from May 31 to June 16 in El Retiro, under the motto ‘New your mind, read your body’.
The official presentation of the event will take place on May 8, starting at 11 a.m., at the Madrid City Council headquarters, the director of the Fair has stressed.
In this edition, it will have more than 300 booths and the presence of some 120 bookstores, to which publishing distributors and institutions will be added.
Among the latter, it will repeat the pavilion of the European Commission and, as a novelty, there will be a stand with books from Africa, thanks to the collaboration with the Guinea Conacry Book Fair, which will be present on the first weekend.
A fair dedicated to sport that will have an ‘Olympic day’, on June 13, organized with the collaboration of the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) and the Paralympic Committee, who will be present that day. Thus, in the morning there will be activities and in the afternoon there will be round tables featuring top-level athletes.
Orúe has highlighted the effort involved in accompanying them on that day because “these are days in which the athletes who go to Paris are preparing.” Likewise, he thanked the “excellent willingness” of the Olympic and Paralympic Committees to collaborate.
“The support of the Olympic Committee and the Paralympic Committee demonstrates that sports practice and reading are not antagonistic, but are intrinsically connected,” stressed the president of the Madrid Book Fair.
Although she did not want to reveal details until the official presentation, the director of the Fair has indicated that the situation in Gaza will be present in some way. “There will be something,” she said when she was expressly asked about this question.
As usual, the Book Fair will start on the last Friday of May, which in this edition coincides with the last day of the month. “We started very late. I hope it’s not much hotter than it usually is and I also hope it doesn’t rain more than it did last year,” he said.
There will also be more scenarios, with activities at the Eugenio Trías Library or the final of the ‘Little Giants of Reading’ contest, where the ten finalists will meet on June 7 at the Cecilio Rodríguez.
“It is an activity that started three years ago, very small, and this year it has already grown. It covers the entire Community of Madrid, Castilla y León and Asturias, and we have pilots in La Rioja, Castilla-La Mancha, Andalusia and the Canary Islands” , has explained about this final.
Likewise, Orúe explained, there will be podcasts at the Casa de Vacas Theater and at least two activities at the Bertelsmann Space, which is outside the Retiro, but very close.
