Hay Festival Colombia Digital

Everybody seems to like the ancient world, and everybody seems to know things better than archaeologists, philologists, and historians. Ever since the early 1970s, there’s been an avalanche of insufficiently professional publications, and the rise of the internet has enabled the reintroduction of already refuted ideas. Measured by its ability to inform the general public of new insights, the study of the ancient world is a disappointment. Fortunately, there are lessons to be learned about proactive forms of science communication.

Jona Lendering (1964) studied history in Leiden and has been writing about archaeology, history, and ancient languages ever since. He published several books and built Livius.org, which was, in the days before the Wikipedia, the largest website on Rome, Greece, Persia, and other civilizations from the distant past. Today, he maintains a daily blog on ancient history, MainzerBeobachter.com.

Jan W. Bok (1970) is a faculty member of the Global College, IE University, Madrid. Before that, he taught Political Philosophy at the Erasmus University, the Netherlands, and World Language and Literature at the Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy. He is a proud graduate from different academic institutions, including the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (History and Arts, Philosophy) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Political Science) in Paris, France.

Presented by Roel Nieuwenkamp, Ambassador of the Royal Embassy of the Netherlands.

Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish

Giles Tremlett is a British historian, journalist and author, widely recognised for his work on Spain and its contemporary history. He has written extensively on the Spanish Civil War, the Franco dictatorship, and the role of Spain in Europe, including acclaimed biographies of Isabel the Catholic and Catalina of Aragón. A contributing writer for The Guardian and former correspondent for The Economist, Tremlett has become one of the foremost foreign voices interpreting Spain’s recent past.

His most recent book, Franco. El dictador que moldeó un país (Franco: The Dictator Who Shaped a Country), offers a compelling portrait of the man who ruled Spain for four decades and whose legacy continues to shape the present.

In conversation with María José Ferrari, Professor and Director of the Chair of Hispanic Cultures at IE University, Tremlett will reflect on the enduring challenges of interpreting history, the tensions between memory and historiography, and the relevance of Spain’s past for today’s Europe.

Event in Spanish

The Paris-based Italian writer Andrea Marcolongo is one of the leading figures in European thought today. A profound connoisseur of ancient Greece and Rome, her works have been characterised by the recovery of classical teachings and knowledge that, even today, can illuminate our present. As a staunch advocate of drawing threads between that period and the present day, there is no one better than her to reflect on Europe today and how it is not only intimately related to these two classical civilisations, but also how it should not forget to return to them to find the answers to its present. Because, as Marcolongo herself states, "everything that is happening now in Europe has already happened".

She will be in conversation with journalist Irene Hernández Velasco. She worked for El Mundo as a correspondent in New York, Rome, London and Paris until 2023, when she joined El Confidencial, where she is head of Culture.

At the end of the event, the author will sign copies of her books

Event in Spanish

The Archivo General de Indias, or Indies Archive, is one of the world’s most important documentary funds. Created in 1785 with the goal of keeping at a single site all the documents related to the Indies, it was the Spanish government’s main archive covering the New World. Its director, Esther Cruces, will talk about its history, its role in the construction of memory, and the challenges of rereading the bundles, maps, plans and documents held there. Presented by Santiago Rojas, Northern Regional Manager and Representative of CAF Peru.

LSP Peruvian Sign Language interpretation available