Hay Festival Cartagena 2025

Federico Guzmán (Mexico) won the 2022 Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Grant with his project Sí hay tal lugar: viaje a las ruinas de las utopías latinoamericanas. To write the book, he travelled to seven places in Latin America which have been the sites of utopian projects: Fordlandia, Pátzcuaro, Nueva Germania….Jordan Salama (USA) travelled the length of the River Magdalena, from its source to its mouth, writing a log of the past and present of Colombia’s most important river. The two authors will talk about their writings with Jaime Abello Banfi.

As well as being three of Latin America’s most renowned writers, Leila Guerriero Argentina), Leonardo Padura (Cuba) and Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Colombia) are all El País columnists. They will talk to Javier Moreno Barber, exdirector of the Spanish newspaper, about how they tackle writing, why it is so important for the reputation of a newspaper to have high profile columnists, and how they contribute to maintaining the narrative, cultural and social bridge between Latin America and Spain.

Fernando Arancón (Spain) is the Editor of El orden mundial, the most read Spanish-language outlet covering international affairs and analysis. Its goal is not just to say what is happening, but why, and it has just published the book Las fuerzas que mueven el mundo, an illustrated work that uses maps, graphs and accessible language to explain 21st-century geopolitics and global economics. He talks to Claudia Gurisatti..

Improbable is a documentary podcast —the first original production by BBC Mundo— about the love story between Catalina and Jorge Suárez. She is a right-wing influencer, close to former president Álvaro Uribe; he is a former guerrilla fighter and son of Mono Jojoy, one of the main commanders of the FARC. The story, told through the voices of the protagonists, family members, friends and archive material, captures the complexities of the conflict and the peace agreement in a country that is slowly changing. Both of them, together with Andrea Díaz Cardona, the documentary maker behind Improbable, will talk to Laura Plitt, a journalist from BBC Mundo.

This event will be recorded and then broadcast as a podcast.

Daniel Samper Pizano and Enrique Santos are two of the sharpest commentators and analysts of Colombian current affairs. Whether via the digital platform Los Danieles, columns, analysis or memoires, they have spent over four decades closely following the national political panorama — sometimes at first hand. Sometimes offering shared perspectives, at other times their views have been opposing. They are in the process of finishing a book that tells the story of both voices. With the provisional title of Memorias charladas, it will gather their journalistic memories, full of humor, anecdotes and reflections around the practice of the profession in Colombia. Accompanied on stage by María Jimena Duzán.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

There is journalism beyond the major media corporations of the United States and the United Kingdom. There are many issues to cover and many perspectives to understand, above and beyond those on the Western, English-speaking agenda. On rowing against the current and the importance of speaking about one’s own issues and from one’s own viewpoint we have Fernando Arancón (Spain), Director de El orden mundial; journalist Denise Maerker (Mexico) and Pankaj Mishra (India), an essayist and creator of magazine Equator talk to El País journalist Javier Lafuente.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

Between fiction and non-fiction there is a fertile land where memory, truth and history mingle. Javier Cercas (Spain) and Leila Guerriero (Argentina) have made this space their field of exploration with novels that are living testimonies and chronicles bursting with narrative. In conversation with Mábel Lara (Colombia), they will talk about these three themes, constants in their work, and about how to pick which path when it comes to telling stories.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

What would it mean to cover socio-environmental conflicts from an ethical point of view? It would mean recognising affected communities and giving them a voice, talking about asymmetrical power relations, and promoting environmental justice in the territories. We invite the following guests to talk about ethically reflecting these problems in their reporting: Andrés Bermúdez Liévano, journalist and editor specialising in environmental investigation at the Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP); Fernanda Pineda (Colombia), winner of a Gabo Prize in the Photography category for Yolüja, a portrait of the spiritual and environmental transformation of La Guajira; and Jordan Salama (USA), a journalist who specialises in migration, the environment and culture, who has recently written about the past and present of the River Magdalena. In conversation with Andrea Díaz Cardona.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

The cost for the Nicaraguan journalist, Carlos Chamorro, to carry out his profession was exile in Costa Rica in 2021; similar to what happened to around 200 of his colleagues and compatriots, whom the Daniel Ortega regime acted against because of their outspoken voices and/or criticisms of his government. “Being a journalist in Nicaragua is equivalent to committing a terrorist crime” said Chamorro in an interview from exile. From Costa Rica, he now runs the media outlet Confidencial: “Although we are in exile, our eyes, our ears and our reporting are in Nicaragua.” In conversation with Diana Calderón.

All events on Saturday, January 31st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

From those who sold miraculous elixirs in the mid-19th century, to the cryptoscammers of the present day, fraudsters continue to promise the world, and we fall victim to their silver tongues. In Charlatanes, Moisés Naím (Venezuela) —together with Quico Toro— analyses the history of swindlers, explaining how the business has evolved with the Internet, and gives us some tips for avoiding being taken in by them. In conversation with José Manuel Acevedo.

All events on Sunday, February 1st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place

All the indicators are telling us that journalism is in crisis. Those who run the most important media organisations face a host of challenges: politicians at war with the media, fake news and post-truth, falling readerships, the delegitimisation of the profession, workers’ conditions in the industry, the killings of journalists in Latin America… However, despite it all, the major media organisations are still our fourth estate. To celebrate 50 years of El País, Jan Martínez Ahrens, the newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief will talk to Carlos Fernando Chamorro, founder and director of the Nicaraguan outlet Confidencial –currently operating from exile in Costa Rica–; and Denise Maerker, one of Mexico’s most respected voices, who currently presents N+ and writes for Milenio. The three will discuss these matters, and will talk to a colleague in the profession, the Colombian Diana Calderón (Caracol Radio).

All events on Sunday, February 1st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

Héctor Abad Faciolince and Catalina Gómez Ángel were together in a pizzeria in Kramatorsk —in the disputed region of Donetsk— when the building was hit by a Russian air attack. Both survived unhurt, but the journalist and writer Victoria Amelina, their guide and travel companion, died a victim of the Russian missiles. Ahora y en la hora is the story by Abad Faciolince of these events, his testimony to tragedy; a narrative about life, aging, death, war, violence and guilt.

All events on Sunday, February 1st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez, one of the most celebrated writers of his generation, has been writing opinion articles for different outlets for almost 20 years and for five of those he has been a regular contributor to Spain’s El País. He now presents a selection of the best articles he has published there. Esto ha sucedido is the work of an intellectual committed to the political reality around us, but also of an observer concerned about the transformation of the world after the pandemic. A manual to guide us through the complexities of our times. In conversation with Javier Moreno.

All events on Sunday, February 1st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

Annie Jacobsen (USA) was a Pulitzer Prize finalist with The Pentagon’s Brain, which was a detailed look into the US military and intelligence apparatus, a field that she has also dealt with in Area 51 and Operation Paperclip. Her latest book, Nuclear War: a Scenario, describes —using realistic events, actions and protocols— how exactly the nuclear war that would bring about the end of humanity might unfold.

Event in English