Hay Festival Colombia Digital

Fighting Women is a compilation of interviews of Spanish women who took part in the civil war. Some took up arms and fought at the front, others participated in organizations such as POUM, Mujeres Libres or other anarchist groups. All of them fought against the nationalist forces and for women’s emancipation, and together they achieved social progress such as free, legal abortion. They started a revolution, and to do so they not only had to fight fascism, but sometimes also their own brothers-in-arms. The great impact of these testimonies invites us to reflect on a struggle that belongs to another time and yet is relevant today. Diego Rabasa (Mexico) talks to the film director Ken Loach (United Kingdom) and Isabella Lorusso (Italy), about this extraordinary message of rebellion and justice.

Why did humans live in stasis throughout most of their existence? What lit the touchpaper of the enormous transformation of our lifestyles just a few hundred years ago? And why has this progress resulted in a vast inequality gap in our world? Asking these questions, the economist and thinker Oded Galor (United States/Israel) reveals, in his influential book, The Journey of Humanity, the keys to understanding two of the great mysteries in the evolution of humanity: progress and inequality. Galor is a Professor at Brown University (United States) and has researched, in depth, processes of change and their impacts, linking them to the economy and social organization. In conversation with José Manuel Acevedo.

Simultaneous interpreting from English to Spanish available

Oded Galor will participate remotely

We humans like to believe that we act rationally, but the emotions are a much more important part of experience that most of us think. Richard Firth-Godbehere has put his thoughts on this matter into his book A Human History of Emotion, which analyses and studies the role of human emotions throughout history and in different cultures. In conversation with Daniel Pardo, the author will talk about how the emotions, in all their complexity and diversity, have modelled the world that we live in over the course of history. This fascinating work of non-fiction weaves together psychology, neuroscience, art, philosophy and religion.

Simultaneous interpreting from English to Spanish available

In the shadows behind official versions of Spanish history, are countless sensational episodes, replete with carnal passions, that altered the course of events or changed them completely without ever being officially documented. In her latest book, Lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos, journalist and writer Marta Robles has travelled through the history of this country in search of all the amorous and sexual adventures that marked power relationships and secret decisions that influenced the course of events.

She talks about the intricacies of love and power with Juan José Güemes, former Minister for Employment and Health of the Madrid Region, who has chaired IE Business School's Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation since 2010.

Event in Spanish

On the 25th of July this year, the city of Santiago de Queretaro will celebrate its 490th anniversary: almost five centuries of history involving indigenous peoples, colonialism, the city’s crucial role in Mexican independence, and contemporary culture. For these reasons, Queretaro has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1995. However, there are a series of myths and legends regarding the prehispanic origins of the city, who were its first peoples who came in contact with the Spaniards and how its founding took place. Fiorella Fenoglio, a research archaeologist at the INAH Queretaro Centre, a heritage expert and a tireless promoter of cultural patrimony, will present a lecture on Queretaro’s material culture, in this very special year.

Event for university students

The acclaimed Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez, whose stories and novels have been translated into 30 languages, has won numerous awards, including the 2011 Alfaguara Novel Prize, the IMPAC Prize for The Sound of Things Falling and the 6th Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana Prize for the short story collection Songs for the Flames. His most recent novel, Volver la vista atrás, is based on the life of the famous Colombian film director, Sergio Cabrera. This portrait of a half century that changed the world is a fascinating social investigation, one that is intimate and political at the same time. Vásquez presents his book together with Cabrera, in conversation with Yael Weiss.

Historian, television presenter, fiction writer and essayist, Simon Sebag Montefiore was present for the last days of the Soviet Union and travelled around the region during the 1990s. He has written on Russia for The Sunday Times, The New York Times and The Spectator, among other magazines and newspapers. A number of his book, including Stalin>: The Court of the Red Tsar, Titans of History and Jerusalem: The Biography have been translated into Spanish. The last book published in Spain by this writer, a descendent of a distinguished family of Sephardic Jews that had branches all over Europe, has been Written in History, a compilation of important letters written about politics, culture and art by great figures who have influenced our past.

Sebag Montefiore will talk to the British journalist Martin Ivens, Editor of The Times Literary Supplement.

Once the event has finished, the author will sign books in the booth outside IE University.

With simultaneous translation from English into Spanish

Russia is the latest work by the British historian and novelist, Antony Beevor. This World War II specialist returns to non-fiction, and to an area he knows well: Russia after the tsars. The struggle that took place between 1917 and 1921 between an alliance of moderate socialists and reactionary monarchists, and Trotsky’s Red Army, as well as Lenin’s subsequent dictatorship, are the themes of this work, which draws on the latest scholarship in the field. The book depicts this period and its conflicts as a world war by proxy, through the eyes of different figures, including a worker in the streets of Petrograd, a cavalry officer, and a woman doctor in a makeshift hospital. This multi-award winning author, translated into over thirty languages (published in Spanish by Crítica), will talk to one of our most prestigious writers, the academic Antonio Muñoz Molina, the author of titles such as El jinete polaco and Volver a dónde.

The event will be presented by Carmen Esteban, CEO of Crítica publishing house.

Once the event has finished, the authors will sign books in the booth outside IE University.

With simultaneous translation from English into Spanish and vice versa