Hay Festival Cartagena 2025

Four experts on the classical world will talk to Toni Celia about the lessons we can take from that period, so far off in time, but so influential for Western culture, and whose echoes can still be heard in our legal systems, the philosophical tradition, and in the sciences and arts. Charlotte Higgins (United Kingdom), Chief Culture Writer at The Guardian, is the author of Greek Myths. A New Retelling, about the influence of ancient Greece on our times; Pablo Montoya (Colombia) is the author of Marco Aurelio y los límites del imperio which portrays the last of the five “good emperors” of Rome; and with John Sellars (United Kingdom), philosopher and the author of books such as Lessons in Stoicism, Epicurus and the Art of Happiness and now Aristotle: Understanding the World’s Greatest Philosopher.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Greg Clark (United Kingdom) is one of the foremost international experts on urban development and globalisation. Author of many books and over 100 reports on cities, investment, innovation and leadership, Clark has worked on the challenges facing cities, and the strategies involved in their sustainability, evolution and prosperity. Global Cities: A Short History analyses the concept of the global city since antiquity, including classic metropolis such as Athens and Rome, as well as the epicentres of our globalised world such as New York, London and Singapore, while also touching on themes such as the economy, war, migration and technology. In conversation with Sergio Díaz-Granados, President of CAF.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Nikole Hannah-Jones (United States) is a journalist who specialises in racial justice, and who received the Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project, a collaborative effort that has also published a book and made a documentary film exploring the history of slavery in the United States. She will speak to Colombian academic Aurora Vergara about the 1619 Project and the new movements for historical reparation which are arising all over the Americas, working to recover the silenced histories of racialized groups who have been left out of official history.

What happens when women challenge power? In conversation with Gloria Susana Esquivel, two writers explore, through fiction and non-fiction respectively, examples of cooperation among women. Txell Feixas (Spain) has been a correspondent in the Middle East, based in Beirut, for the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals and she is the author of the book Mujeres valientes, which deals with the struggles of women during the conflicts of the Middle East. She also received the 2024 National Journalism Prize for her book Aliadas. Laura Ortiz Gómez (Colombia) is the author of Indócil, a work of history that explores the “broom strike”, a popular movement that occurred in Argentina in 1907 when women, inhabitants of the conventillos of Buenos Aires, refused to pay their rent and took to the streets.

This event forms part of the Literary Pairs series run by Hay Festival and the British Council; as part of the initiative, each pair will repeat their conversation at the 2025 Hay-on-Wye Festival (Wales, United Kingdom). With Johny Pitts (United Kingdom), television presented, writer and photographer, as well as a curator of the electronic magazine Afropean.com, a successful mouthpiece of the Afro-European diaspora and now a book, Afropean: Notes From Black Europe. He will talk to Óscar Guardiola-Rivera (Colombia), a writer, philosopher, lecturer in Law and Human Rights at Birkbeck (University of London), and author of Si Latinoamérica gobernase el mundo, in which Guardiola reflects on the development of European capitalism, built based on flows of money from Mexico and the Andean silver mine of Potosi, looking in depth at the recent history of the development economies of Latin American and the Caribbean. His most recent book is Under the World. In conversation with Camila Osorio.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All Sunday 2 February events will be free for people from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your ID, between 27 Janaury and 2 February.