Hay Festival Colombia Digital

In 2016, the data agency Cambridge Analytica manipulated, through Facebook, the information received by over 86 million users to influence the result of the US presidential elections and the Brexit referendum that same year. Carole Cadwalladr, a British investigative journalist who works for The Guardian, was the one who broke the scandal. Although Cambridge Analytica no longer exists, there are other companies that are still involved in similar practices. At this event, Cadwalladr will talk about the personal and professional consequences that she continues to face to this day for making her investigation public, and she will also discuss the importance of freedom of speech for democracy. In conversation with Emma Graham-Harrison.

Simultaneous interpreting from English to Spanish available

Leontxo García (Spain) has been speaking and writing for 40 years about chess and its fascinating links with different fields of knowledge. At this event with Jan Martínez Ahrens, the author will share some views on this activity, which in recent years has enjoyed great success among Internet users. He will talk about its positive effects on the mental and emotional development of children, and its benefits in terms of the prevention of Alzheimer’s, and even the role that chess players have had in the struggles for power among the different geopolitical blocs over the course of history.

The writer and journalist Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus), winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature, is a specialist in Soviet and post-Soviet history. She is the author of outstanding works including The Unwomanly Face of War, Voices from Chernobyl and Secondhand Time. Mariana Katzarova (Belarus) is the founder of RAW in WAR, an initiative that supports women journalists and human rights activists who work in regions in conflict. Katzarova has worked in such areas in Bosnia, Kosovo and the North Caucasus, and for a decade was the Russia investigator for Amnesty International. She has also led the UN’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission. At this event, these extraordinary figures will talk about the urgent need to investigate matters related to human rights, particularly in conflicts involving, or within, Russia.

Event in Russian with English and Spanish subtitles


Learn more about the great writer and journalist Svetlana Alexievichwith our BONUS TRACK

Essential workshop on digital journalism with Carolina Robino (Chile), the Director of BBC Mundo, in which she talks about the digital model of one of the world’s most respected media organizations. Robino started working as a journalist as a writer with La Época newspaper, the first opposition media outlet founded during Pinochet’s regime. Later she worked as national and culture editor of the Chilean magazine Hoy. In the year 2000 she moved to BBC Mundo, where she has worked as a reporter, a video editor, General Editor and Director, her current position.

Event for university students

Print journalism is going through a phase of ongoing change and reinvention. The capacity of culture to reinvent ideas and contribute to business has led to the creation of ABC Cultural Premium, the first initiative that allows you to become a digital subscriber to just the cultural section of a daily newspaper. The Culture section is one of the mainstays of ABC's core offer, which is why it has created this option that offers access to the supplement and much more content. The novelist and journalist Karina Sainz Borgo, currently a columnist for ABC and author of two successful novels (the most recent being El tercer país), and the columnist and writer José Peláez and historian, journalist, and co-founder of Zendalibros.com and the Zenda-Edhasa publishing house, María José Solano. The event will be moderated by the director of ABC Cultural, Jesús García Calero.

At the end of the event, the authors will sign copies of their books at the book stall at the entrance of the IE University.

Event in Spanish

Javier Cercas (Ibahernando, Cáceres, 1962) has been saying things since he published his first novel in 1987. Nothing in his fiction is alien to his environment, to the society and circumstances that surround him. They are contexts that help us understand the characters in his works and their stories. But there is also the article writer and essayist Javier Cercas, where reality takes centre stage, and he is the protagonist, as in his latest book No Callar. Crónicas, ensayos y artículos 2000-2022. Author of novels such as El vientre de la ballena (The Whale’s Belly, 1997), Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis, 2001), Anatomía de un instante (Anatomy of a Moment, 2009), Terra Alta (a Planeta Prize-winner in 2019) and Independencia (Independence, 2021). His books have been translated into more than 30 languages and have won the most prestigious awards, such as the Premio Nacional in Spain, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Fiction Prize, the Mondello Prize in Italy, the Malraux Prize in France, and the Prize for the Best European Novel awarded by the European Parliament. He has also been awarded major awards for essays and journalism, such as the Francisco Cerecedo and the Mariano de Cavia awards in Spain.

He will talk about his latest work and his career with the journalist Vicente Vallés, who currently presents and directs the news programme Noticias 2 on Antena 3 TV channel. He is the author of the essay Trump y la caída del imperio Clinton (Trump and the Fall of the Clinton Empire, 2017) and the novel Operación Kazán (Kazan Operation, 2022).

At the end of the event, the authors will sign their works at the bookstand in front of the IE University.

Event in Spanish

Probably many curious children have asked some of the following questions: what is the radio? What makes it create sound? What are the basic elements inside a radio set? What is a presenter? What are advertisements for? At this interesting, fun event, Tere Alcántara will explain all this and answer other questions, as well as teaching us how to make a homemade microphone with an empty milk carton, a piece of cloth, a hands-free set with a wire, glue and scissors.

Ages 6 and over

"You don’t take photos with a camera, but with your head and your heart.” So says Bernardo Pérez, whose viewfinder has been aimed at those black holes around the planet suffering from violence, extreme poverty and the abandonment of human rights. His camera was also a witness to some of the main events of the Spanish Transition to Democracy, after he joined the founding team of El País in 1976, as well sporting events such as the Olympic Games, heads of state, international conflicts… Pérez has accompanied writers such as Juan Goytisolo and journalists like Maruja Torres on projects for El País Semanal magazine, assignments that have taken him around the Americas and Europe. He will talk to the Hay Festival Segovia about his experience, putting words to the Compromiso con la realidad exhibition that will accompany the festival, putting a selection of his images on show.

Pérez will talk to the journalist Aurelio Martín.

Event in Spanish

Can literature counteract the negative consequences for society of fake news? Nativel Preciado and Antonio Lucas, two writers who are both journalists and authors, will try to answer this question from the point of view of literary figures, and also talk about how those who work in the media can fight the impact of fake news and move towards quality journalism. Nativel Preciado has had a long career as a journalist, going back to her coverage of the Transition to Democracy. This columnist and public speaker has published around twenty books. Her latest novel, El santuario de los elefantes, won the Azorín Prize. Antonio Lucas is a well-known cultural journalist, Editor of the El Mundo supplement, La Esfera de Papel. He is also a distinguished poet, having been recognized with the Loewe Prize for his book Los desengaños.

They will talk to Daniel Fernández, editor and CEO of Cedro.

Event in Spanish

After the event, the writers will be signing books at the stand on Calle Real