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Workshop: The Minimal Autobiography, by Beltrán Gambier
A Life in Just One Thousand Words
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Biblioteca Pública Municipal Eugenio Trías (Madrid)
Intramuros magazine, a pioneer in the autobiographical genre in Spanish, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, continuing to explore the form known as the "minimal autobiography." Its director, Beltrán Gambier, will lead a workshop guiding participants in writing their life stories in just 1,000 words.
Through theoretical guidelines and the reading of selected excerpts from autobiographies, Gambier will motivate attendees—no academic background required—to write four or five initial paragraphs (or a complete minimal autobiography) in the first person. These texts will be shared and discussed among participants in the second session of the workshop.
With the collaboration of Laura Ventura, literature professor and journalist. Assistant: Yago Cabrera Pérez
Minimal Autobiography Workshop with Beltrán Gambier and Pedro Zuazua
A Life in Few Words
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Centro Penitenciario de Segovia
Hay Festival Segovia returns once again to the Segovia Penitentiary Centre, driven by the success of previous years, with the Minimal Autobiography Workshop led by Beltrán Gambier, founder and director of Intramuros magazine, which is dedicated to this literary genre. With over three decades of history, Intramuros has featured contributions from prestigious authors, including Nobel Prize winners Günter Grass, Herta Müller, and Mo Yan. Gambier is also a lawyer and author of several legal texts, including one focused on Penitentiary Administrative Law.
The workshop once again includes the participation of Pedro Zuazua, a trained philologist and practicing journalist. Author of En mi casa no entra un gato and Días para ser gato, autobiographical works centered on his life with his cats, Mia and Atún.
This is a valuable opportunity for inmates to take part in a high-level literary activity, where they will be invited to write a short autobiographical fragment.
Writers have visited to London for centuries, from Europe and beyond. Lost & Found exhibition reveals how the city has inspired them, bringing to light a Europe and a London of the imagination. It is based on an interactive digital map designed by the European Institute, the Faculty of Arts and the Bartlett Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL, which allows the visitor to explore London from texts written in more than twenty European languages, including Spanish, Catalan and Galician.
Ideas for new passages to include on the map are very welcome. For more information visit www.europeanliterarylondon.org
The exhibition will be open from 11 to 14 September
This event has taken place
Co-organised with the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Spain
Letters for freedom à la carte. It is possible to take a guided tour of this magnificent exhibition in such a way that the visit becomes a personalised experience, in which each photograph acquires its own dimension, an appropriate context and a full interpretation. The visit will be attended by the curator of the exhibition, Aku Estebaranz and the Councillor for Culture of Segovia City Council, Juan Carlos Monroy.
The exhibition Letters for Freedom shows 60 unpublished photographs by Walter Reuter that form part of a thematic set of 360 negatives belonging to Reuter's Valencian period, during which he was the official photographer of the Second International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture in 1937, held in Valencia in the midst of the Spanish Civil War.
The exhibition will be open until the end of September
The international architecture and design festival Concéntrico, held annually in Logroño, is participating for the first time in Hay Festival with a dual proposal that activates the public space of Segovia's Plaza Mayor. Dancing Bench, an installation by London-based studio Soft Baroque, is presented alongside the book Concéntrico: Urban Innovation Laboratory, edited by Nick Axel and Javier Peña Ibáñez and published by Park Books.
Dancing Bench is part of a series of mobile furniture pieces that transform everyday objects through a mechanism of parallel moving planes. Upon sitting, the visitor is invited to spin them, generating an experience somewhere between an optical illusion and an unusual ergonomic sensation. These benches "dance" with you or for you, creating moments of visual distortion but also of shared calm, like a rocking chair or an urban hammock. With support from the British Council, Dancing Bench was presented for the first time at the last edition of Concéntrico (June 2025).
The book Concéntrico: Urban Innovation Laboratory chronicles a decade of the festival in Logroño, documenting 150 interventions that have transformed the city into a laboratory for urban innovation. Through 86 projects by artists, architects, and designers from 20 countries, the publication explores how architecture and design can activate public space, strengthen communities, and open up new forms of relationship between citizens and their surrounding
Event in Spanish
This event has taken place
Co-organized by British Council, Concéntrico and the Town Hall of Segovia
Nerea Blanco Marañón, Carmen Páez, Miguel Ángel Serrano in conversation with Jorge Corrales
Does AI Pose a Threat to Creativity? Artificial Intelligence and the future of culture
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IE University. Sala Capitular
Critical reflection on the impact of Artificial Intelligence on written culture, copyright, and access to culture. The session will discuss the role of writers, translators, journalists, and publishers; the current confusion between creation and compilation of works; and the risks of cultural homogenization. The panel will be introduced and moderated by Jorge Corrales, general director of CEDRO, and will also feature Carmen Páez, Undersecretary at the Ministry of Culture; Miguel Ángel Serrano, author of the essay Androiceno. Escribir en la era de la inteligencia artificial; and the philosopher and writer Nerea Blanco Marañón.
There will be a book signing at the end of the event
Radka Denemarková in conversation with Monika Zgustová
Past that stains
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Biblioteca Municipal Casa de la Lectura
Radka Denemarková is one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in contemporary Czech literature — a novelist, playwright, and translator whose fiction delves into unresolved social issues such as xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny. For Denemarková, these challenges are deeply connected to the rise of nationalism and the struggle for fundamental human rights in a still deeply patriarchal Eastern Europe. Her latest published work is Sangre de chocolate.
She will speak with Monika Zgustová, a Spanish-Czech writer and translator whose work explores exile — both internal and external — and the everyday impact of authoritarian regimes on personal freedom.
At the end of the event, the author will sign copies of her books
Event in Czech with consecutive translation into Spanish
This event has taken place
In collaboration with the Czech Centre Madrid, the Czech Literary Centre in Prague, and Galaxia Gutenberg
Angélica Tanarro in conversation with Carlos Aganzo
What we (don't) know about words
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Biblioteca Pública de Segovia
Two poets. Two writers. Two cultural journalists. Two faithful to the word, to its ultimate consequences. Angélica Tanarro and Carlos Aganzotalk about their experiences in the world of journalism and culture, but also about their own poetic work, in that other way of looking at the world that poetry always has, and about their relationship with readers. Two very different voices, but the same literary devotion.
Presented by Carmen Delibes Senna-Cheribbo, director of Biblioteca Pública de Segovia.
Event in Spanish
This event has taken place
With the collaboration of the Junta de Castilla y León and Biblioteca Pública de Segovia
Mariana Enriquez in conversation with Miquel Molina
South to North Conversations
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Teatro Juan Bravo
Gothic horror, or ‘weird fiction’ with a twist, some punk thrown in, and laced with episodes from the history of her native Argentina, give us the works of renowned writer and journalist Mariana Enriquez, know as the Princess of Terror. Her novels also offer social commentary on issues such as the role of women, violence, and the never-fully-told story of her country’s dictatorship. In 2019, she won Anagrama’s Herralde Prize with her novel Nuestra parte de noche (Our Share of Night). In 2022, she was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the horror category for The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, going on to receive the 2024 José Donoso Ibero-American Literature Prize.
Enríquez will discuss her work and her many influences with Miquel Molina, writer and Deputy Editor of La Vanguardia.
There will be a book signing after the event
Event in Spanish
This event has taken place
Supported by Open Society Foundations and organised together with Diputación de Segovia and Teatro Juan Bravo
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Torreón de Lozoya (entrada por la Calle Grabador Espinoza)
A new edition of Own and Others, a series of read-aloud readings now in its 17th year. The Torreón de Lozoya is one of the most iconic buildings in the city — a fortified tower-house, a type that was very common in Segovia between the 13th and 15th centuries. It is a palatial complex with two towers, a courtyard, and a garden with a fortified gallery. Carlos Aganzo, Guillermo de'Medici, Marian Hens, Carlos Hernández-Lahoz, Fernando R. La Fuente, Momtaza Mehri, Ainhoa Sánchez, Javier Velaza, Cristina Ward, Pablo Morillo, Margarita Sanz Lobo and Beltrán Gambier will read their own texts or those of their favourite poets.
José Félix Valdivieso, poet and self-confessed lover of languages and language, will be joining the readings as master of ceremonies.
Event with readings in Spanish, Dutch and English
This event has taken place
Co-organized with the Torreón de Lozoya Foundation of the Caja Segovia Foundation and the collaboration of Acción Cultural Española, AC/E and The Jose Manuel Lara Foundation
William Chislett, Marta Rebón and Uta Staiger talk to Debbi Christophers
The foreign gaze: Writing Here and There
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Biblioteca Municipal Casa de la Lectura
What happens when we see ourselves as others see us? How does the place we are in influence the content of our writing and the way we write? What challenges do authors face when writing about a city, a country or in a language that is not their own? To discuss these questions, we will take as our starting point the literary map offered by the exhibition Lost & Found, organised by University College London, which explores London through the eyes of European writers, and Los Curiosos Impertinentes, the new book by William Chislett, about how three centuries of British travel writing have shaped Spain’s image abroad.
He will be joined by Marta Rebón, writer and literary translator who has won awards for her versions of Vasili Grossman's Life and Fate and Georgy Vladimov's The Faithful Ruslan. Uta Staiger,who has co-organised Lost & Found. A European Literary Map of London.
The debate will be moderated by Debbi Christophers, Cultural Attache at the British Embassy, Madrid.
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Biblioteca Municipal de Segovia Casa de la Lectura
Writer Carmen Posadas claims to have seen it all. With a rich literary trajectory spanning genres and themes, her stories often revolve around dazzling and dramatic pasts, far-off travels, and grounded characters who confront reality. Her latest novel, misterioso caso del impostor del Titanic (The Mysterious Case of the Titanic Impostor), takes inspiration from a real-life figure —Emilia Pardo Bazán— to craft an unexpected journey through New York and Cuba in the days following the sinking of the Titanic.
Posadas will speak with Ana Gavín, Director of Editorial Relations at Grupo Planeta.
At the end of the event, the author will sign copies of her books
Juan Cruz in conversation with Cristina Fuentes La Roche
Literature versus Reality
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Torreón de Lozoya
A thoughtful dialogue between a seasoned writer with a cultural manager on our environment, the dramatic changes taking place, in Europe in particular, and what the future holds, if indeed anything can be predicted. Canary Islander Juan Cruz, man of the periphery, where different cultures converge, and Cristina Fuentes La Roche, International Director of Hay Festival, will discuss how literature can confront and allay all this uncertainty.
Cruz has just published Secreto y pasión de la literatura, a "luminous and passionate" portrait of great contemporary authors such as Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García-Márquez, Jorge Semprún and Jorge Luis Borges.
There will be a book signing after the event.
Event in Spanish
This event has taken place
Co-organised with Grupo Planeta and the collaboration of Acción Cultural Española, AC/E and Fundación Torreón de Lozoya of Fundación Caja Segovia
FT Weekend Debate: Radka Denemarková, Amanda Sloat, Carlos Franganillo and Barney Jopson in conversation with Frederick Studemann
Friends No More? The US, Europe, and the End of a Transatlantic Era
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IE University. Aula Magna
For decades, the transatlantic relationship has been a cornerstone of Western stability, built on shared values and strategic interests. Today, diverging priorities, cultural misunderstandings, and shifting global power threaten to turn a shared horizon into a widening gulf.
This debate brings together Carlos Franganillo, journalist, anchor of TV News at Telecinco and former foreign correspondent in the US and Rusia; Radka Denemarková, acclaimed Czech novelist and essayist known for her sharp insights on democracy and human rights; Amanda Sloat, former Senior Director for Europe at the US National Security Council with deep expertise in transatlantic relations; and Barney Jopson, Financial Times Spain & Portugal correspondent with two decades of geopolitical reporting.
In conversation with Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times, they will ask whether the US and Europe are undergoing a necessary evolution —or facing an irreversible divorce.
Event in English with simultaneous interpretation into Spanish
Alfonso Alegre Heitzmann in conversation with Félix Losada Vieira
Poetry, threshold of the world
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Torreón de Lozoya
From the poetic roots of his latest book, Hueso en astilla, Alfonso Alegre Heitzmann talks to Félix Losada Vieira about writing as a form of attention, the word as threshold, silence as origin. Poetry as a place of presence: a way of being in the world that does not seek to represent, but to reveal. A conversation that crosses the arts, mysticism and the poetic memory of an author who has known how to listen to the world from its deepest breath.
At the end of the event, the author will sign copies of his books.
Event in Spanish
This event has taken place
With the support of Acción Cultural Española, AC/E
Carlos del Amoris arguably the most recognizable face of cultural journalism in Spain. His reports, carefully balanced between passion and the pursuit of the perfect headline, hit the mark with remarkable precision, consistently capturing the viewer's attention. A joyful rara avis, perhaps — a true dabbler in life — he will engage in conversation with Pedro Zuazua to reflect on their work, influences, and upcoming projects.
Del Amor’s reputation for journalistic excellence is backed by international recognition, including awards for his documentary Revealing Dalí. He made his literary debut in 2013 with the short story collection Life, Sometimes (La vida a veces) and this year he has published Una dama desconocida, a detective-style tale about a mysterious woman supposedly painted by Velázquez.
At the end of the event, the author will sign copies of his books
Event in Spanish
This event has taken place
Co-organised with Grupo Planeta and Fundación Torreón de Lozoya of Fundación Caja Segovia and the support of Acción Cultural Española, AC/E
In a Europe marked by uncertainty, populism, and a future too complex to calmly plan for, culture can give us the resilience we need. Because culture is another form of politics—it creates spaces for dialogue and helps us understand "the other." Where there is culture, there is always hope. This is how Teresa Grøtan, director of the Bergen International Literary Festival, sees it. A journalist and writer, she has published several books, the most recent being Før øya synker. She will speak with Miquel Molina, deputy editor of La Vanguardia and writer.
The event will be introduced by Nikola Pantelić and Vanessa Ileana Chioaru, Editor-in-Chief of the IE European Union Journal and the Vice President of the IE European Union Club.
Event in english with simultaneous interpretation into Spanish
This event has taken place
In collaboration with Bergen International Festival and the Royal Embassy of Norway in Spain
Dolores Redondo in conversation with Laura Ventura
Unearthing secrets
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IE University. Aula Magna
Dolores Redondo is the author of the Baztán Trilogy, a true literary phenomenon. The three novels—, The Legacy of the Bones, and Offering to the Storm—have reached over three million readers, and all three were successfully adapted into films between 2017 and 2020. The trilogy was followed by All This I Will Give to You (Todo esto te daré), winner of the 2016 Planeta Prize and the award’s best-selling novel in recent years. Her most recent work is Las que no duermen NASH.
Her novels delve into a world of tradition where buried secrets emerge from the folds of evil and human contradiction. She will be in conversation with Laura Ventura, PhD in Hispanic Philology and professor of Literature at Universidad Carlos III. Ventura is also a contributor to the Argentine newspaper La Nación.
At the end of the event, the author will sign copies of her books
Juan Gabriel Vásquez in conversation with Helena de Bertodano
Living Through Others
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Biblioteca Municipal Casa de la Lectura
For Juan Gabriel Vásquez, literature is a way of reinterpreting the past, giving meaning to events and the decisions of those who lived them. Deeply influenced by authors such as Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, he is drawn to the idea of becoming someone else through fiction —and through that transformation, pushing society forward. A prolific author, acclaimed by both the public and critics, presents his latest work: The Names of Feliza, inspired by the life of the colombian sculptor Feliza Bursztyn.
He will discuss his work and literary influences with Helena de Bertodano, a journalist specializing in interviews with key figures of contemporary literature, such as Umberto Eco, Isabel Allende, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mario Vargas Llosa.
At the end of the event, the author will sign copies of his books
Event in Spanish
This event has taken place
Co-organised with Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial and AECID (Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation)
Javier Cercas in conversation with Montserrat Domínguez
Literature of Engagement
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IE University. Aula Magna
In 2023, Spanish writer Javier Cercas received an unusual invitation: to accompany Pope Francis on a trip to Mongolia, with complete freedom to speak with him without restrictions. The unusual part? Cercas openly identifies as an atheist and anticlerical. Upon returning, he claimed he came back "even more atheist and more anticlerical" and went on to write El loco de Dios en el fin del mundo ('God’s Madman at the End of the World'). Just one of those Catholic Church oddities, he says..>
But Cercas is much more than his latest book. A staunch Europeanist, he has built a solid body of narrative and essayistic work, translated into more than 30 languages. His major works include El vientre de la ballena ('The Belly of the Whale'); Soldados de Salamina ('Soldiers of Salamis'); Anatomía de un instante ('Anatomy of a Moment'); El impostor ('The Impostor'); El monarca de las sombras ('The Monarch of the Shadows') and Terra Alta. At the heart of Cercas’s work lies a belief in the need for culture to move beyond ideological trenches and assert itself in the face of institutional power.
He will discuss his life and work with Montserrat Domínguez, journalist and current Director of Content at Cadena SER. Domínguez was previously deputy editor of El País and head of El País Semanal. Between 2012 and 2018, she was editor-in-chief of the digital news outlet HuffPost España.
At the end of the event, the author will sign copies of his books
Event in Spanish
This event has taken place
Co-organised with Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial
