The fourth Hay Festival Forum Sevilla will take place on 16 and 17 February 2026 at various venues across the Andalusian capital. The programme will feature 14 events exploring the role of culture as a driver of change and social transformation.
Álvaro Romero, Sofía Barroso and Eloy Martínez de la Pera
Palaces of the House of Alba: heritage and memory
–
Fundación Valentín de Madariaga
The conservation and dissemination of cultural heritage in Spain today cannot be explained without highlighting the extraordinary work of the Casa de Alba Foundation. His palaces in Liria, Las Dueñas and Monterrey bring together a vast cultural and historical legacy that explains the transformative power of art.
The Hay Festival Forum in Seville has brought together three experts who share a passion for promoting art. Álvaro Romero Sánchez-Arjona, who, as cultural director of the Casa de Alba Foundation, will talk about the foundation's palace art collection. Sofía Barroso, a key figure in the promotion of art in Spain. And Eloy Martínez de la Pera, curator of successful exhibitions and a key figure in Spanish fashion.
The event will be presented by Valentín de Madariaga, president of the Valentín de Madariaga y Oya Foundation, which is dedicated to sharing his legacy in the field of business, cultural and social entrepreneurship by generating new ideas and innovative projects.
Free admission for students
Event in Spanish
Price: £7.50
Co-organised with the Casa de Alba Foundation and in collaboration with the Valentín de Madariaga Foundation
Tomás Graves in conversation with Irene Hernández Velasco
Spanish and British perspectives
–
Fundación Valentín de Madariaga
Being the son of a true icon of international literature such as Robert Graves can be a burden or open up a world of almost infinite possibilities. The latter is the case for Tomás Graves, who would have felt right at home in the Renaissance: a printer, translator, photographer, ethnographer, writer, musician and co-organiser of the first Hay Festival in Spain. His childhood and youth were marked by the family home in Mallorca, where his father welcomed personalities from the world of culture, with whom he interacted on a first-name basis, without formalities.
Tomás Graves' latest work, Afinando al alba ('Tuning up at dawn'), deals precisely with that period of his life, always in relation to music, and explores a life that will never return —with his father now gone, most of his famous friends gone, and Mallorca transformed by sometimes voracious tourism. Graves feels Mallorcan, where he was born, but also unquestionably British. In both cases, he is marked by insularity and a determined effort to provide keys to a better understanding between British and Spanish culture.
He will discuss his life and work with journalist Irene Hernández Velasco, who worked at El Mundo as a correspondent in New York, Rome, London and Paris until 2023, when she joined El Confidencial, where she is head of Culture. The event will be presented by Sheila Cremaschi, director of the Hay Festival Forum Seville and chosen by Forbes as one of the “75 Latin American women to follow in 2024”.
Free admission for students
Event in Spanish
Price: £7.50
In collaboration with the Valentín de Madariaga Foundation and El Confidencial
There are phenomena related to literature that are truly surprising, such as the power of social media to create reading communities and how they have become a tool for promoting reading among young people. Bookfluencer and writer Patricia Ibárcena will discuss this and the rise of reading among young people, especially teenage girls, as well as the literary genres that most appeal to young people. Presented by Pablo Marillo, director of Fundación José Manuel Lara.
Ibárcena will be in conversation with a young writer who will be announced very soon.
Event in Spanish
Free admission for students
Price: £7.50
Co-organised with the José Manuel Lara Foundation and in collaboration with the Valentín de Madariaga Foundation
–
EUSA, Campus de la Cámara de Comercio de Sevilla (C/ Isabela, 1)
Gardens are an exuberant artistic exercise in which landscape designers allow themselves to draw nature. Over the last 20 years, landscaping has received a notable boost in Spain, especially in Andalusia. Many of these gardens have become a source of inspiration and, as a result, a cause of interest for many people eager to visit them and enjoy a multisensory experience between humans and their environment.
Sofía Barroso has become an expert in promoting these landscapes thanks to her company Around Art, through which she organises personalised trips to historic and newly created gardens. At this event, she will talk about her experiences in Andalusian gardens and many of their hidden secrets, experiences that elevate the concept of tourism and link it to culture and nature.
The event will be presented by Javier Fernández, Director General of the University Campus of the Seville Chamber of Commerce (EUSA).
Event in Spanish
Free up to capacity
Co-organised with the Seville Chamber of Commerce Campus (EUSA) and with the Seville Chamber of Commerce and in collaboration with Around Art
The minds of young people are like sponges, ready to absorb positive stimuli even in the most adverse social conditions. Anything is possible when culture acts as a driver of social progress. Magician Luigi Ludus will perform his show El mago de los libros ('The Book Magician') before a large audience of students from the most vulnerable areas of the city. The aim is to bring a passion for books to young children in a fun and entertaining way, thus turning books and reading comprehension into fundamental tools for the educational development of these minors and opening doors to a fairer future with more opportunities.
Event in Spanish
Price: £0.00
Co-organised with the José Manuel Lara Foundation and in collaboration with the Cajasol Foundation
–
EUSA, Campus de la Cámara de Comercio de Sevilla (C/ Isabela, 1)
Intramuros magazine is a pioneer in Spanish in the writing of the self. About to celebrate its first 30 years of uninterrupted activity and with the largest collection of minimal autobiographies —more than 600 texts written especially for the magazine— by great figures of literature, including three Nobel Prize winners —Herta Müller, Günter Grass and Mo Yan. Intramuros aims to build a network to preserve the heritage of the linguistic community of those who write and feel in Spanish.
Beltrán Gambier, its director, will lead a workshop in which he will guide participants in writing about their lives. In the first part (30 minutes), Gambier will provide some theoretical guidelines and read excerpts from short autobiographies with the aim of motivating participants—who do not need any academic training—to write (in the next 30 minutes) three or four opening paragraphs, which will be read and discussed (in the last 30 minutes) among the participants.
Event in Spanish
Limited places available
Co-organised by EUSA, the Seville Chamber of Commerce Campus
–
Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura (Campus Reina Mercedes de la Universidad de Sevilla)
According to the popular saying, ‘the best camera in the world is the one you carry with you.’ In this practical workshop for twenty young people, taught by Lisbeth Salas(Venezuela), participants learn how to use only their smartphones to turn their casual snapshots into personal images that could be framed. Beyond technical knowledge, it is about learning to look, to know what we are facing before taking the photograph, because, as the photographer herself says: ‘photographers are tamers of light’.
These sessions will include some preliminary explanations, but will mainly consist of a series of practical exercises through which participants will discover, in a fun way, the resources of composition and lighting to improve their technique and creativity when taking photographs.
Event in Spanish
Limited places
Co-organised with the Higher Technical School of Architecture of the University of Seville
María Dueñas in conversation with Ana Gavín and readers from Polígono Sur in Seville
Exile in María Dueñas
–
Fundación Cajasol
People's destinies are not only shaped by their human relationships. Geography has a profound impact on lives that would have developed differently under other circumstances. This is especially true in the case of exile forced by poverty, which compels people to reinvent themselves and forge a new path, as pointed out by the Reading and Writing Club of the Entre Amigos Association of Polígono Sur in Seville, which works tirelessly to facilitate social progress through reading. This club, made up of women, has been meeting every week for 10 years and uses reading as a form of personal growth.
As part of this process, its members have chosen to talk to María Dueñas at Hay Festival Forum Seville. They will discuss her latest novel, Por si un día volvemos ('In Case We Return One Day'), in which she skilfully narrates these lives that are changed by social constraints. Dueñas will talk to Ana Gavín, director of Editorial Relations at Grupo Planeta, and with the members of the reading club and users of the Municipal Centre.
Subsequently, the members of this book club will have the opportunity to twin with other book clubs in Segovia, where they will travel in September to continue their journey of personal development through reading.
Event in Spanish
Free admission for students
Price: £7.50
Co-organised with Grupo Planeta and in collaboration with the Cajasol Foundation
Sophie Demange in conversation with Zélie Perpignaa
Literature as a form of protest
–
Fundación Cajasol
Art can serve as a form of social commentary and thus improve people's lives, but to do so, one must be willing to experience uncomfortable situations and have the courage to give them form. This is what Sophie Demange has done. After studying literature and spending several years in India and Mexico, she returned to France, where she has worked with humanitarian organisations that care for homeless people, sex workers and unaccompanied minors. She is currently dedicated to protecting children with functional diversity. Las carniceras is her first and successful novel. It is a vibrant thriller that denounces, excites and celebrates sisterhood as a weapon and refuge.
Demange will be interviewed by Zélie Perpignaa, who is the attaché for Books, Ideas Debates and Media Libraries at the Institut Français in Spain.. She previously worked in the publishing sector as press officer at Calmann-Lévy, after gaining experience at the Grasset publishing house and at Villa Albertine in New York. Specialising in book promotion and cultural mediation, she collaborates on literary programming and debate projects.
Event in French with simultaneous translation into Spanish
Free admission for students
Price: £7.50
Co-organised with the Institut Français and Siruela publishing house, in collaboration with the Cajasol Foundation
Juan Bonilla and Martín Caparrós in conversation with Erna von der Walde
Other stories from the Archivo de Indias
–
Fundación Valentín de Madariaga
Otras historias del Archivo de Indias, an anthology to be published by Anagrama, brings together texts by ten renowned Ibero-American authors, who will craft works of fiction based on documents preserved at the General Archive of the Indies. This project aims to bring the archive’s vast documentary holdings closer to a general audience, recovering some of the many stories recorded there through a diversity of voices.To learn more about this anthology, two of the writers participating in this publication, Juan Bonilla and Martin Caparrós, will talkt to the book's editor, Erna von der Walde. Cristina Fuentes La Roche, international director of the Hay Festival, will present the event.
Event in Spanish
Free admission for students
Price: £7.50
Co-organised with CAF (Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean) and in collaboration with the Valentín de Madariaga Foundation, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial and the Archivo de Indias
In the most complex situations, when uprooting seems absolute and irreversible, there is always a small glimmer of hope that has to do with human relationships, capable of saving any situation. Writer Nancy Huston delves into the complex world of identities and their questioning. All of this is forcefully reflected in her latest novel, I Will Call You France, which he will discuss in detail with Alban Elkaim, a French journalist based in Seville who works for Radio France and other media outlets such as Reporterre, Le Télégramme, Slate, and Basta!.
The event will be presented by Zélie Perpignaa, book attaché at the French Institute.
Event in French with simultaneous translation into Spanish
Free admission for students
Price: £7.50
Co-organised with the French Institute and Galaxia Gutenberg Publishing House, in collaboration with the Cajasol Foundation
Abdelaziz Báraka Sakin and Rashid Diab in conversation
The Noise of Silence
–
Fundación Valentín de Madariaga
Lives condemned to exile for exercising their creative freedom. Painter Rashid Diab and writer Abdelaziz Báraka Sakin, both Sudanese, discuss creativity in novels and the visual arts, between silence and words, images and the symbolic power of the imagination. The dialogue addresses the lives of both men and the difficulties suffered by free artists, within a philosophy of extended spaces that express the depth of time in literary text. They will also discuss the sources of inspiration that come from the sounds of letters and words, that is, from the essence of expressing ideas in their lives, within an environment saturated with customs, traditions and ancestral history. Both have been recognized in the countries where they live. Diab was awarded the Cross of the Order of Civil Merit in 2013 by the then King of Spain, Juan Carlos I; Báraka received the highest cultural distinction awarded by the French government: Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (2023)
Event in arabic with consecutive translation into Spanish
Free admission for students
Price: £7.50
Co-organised by Open Society Foundations and in collaboration with the Valentín de Madariaga Foundation
Javier Gomá in conversation with Helena de Bertodano
Exemplarity as social progress
–
Fundación Cajasol - Teatro
Philosopher Javier Gomá is clear: society must continue to be scandalised by what it considers reprehensible, because that is how it keeps exemplarity alive. This allows the ideal of human dignity to be upheld and acts as a driving force for social progress. To achieve this, according to Gomá, we must work towards a more egalitarian exemplarity that accepts more vulgar cultural parameters—typical of our times—without renouncing certain touches of past elitism.
He will be interviewed by Helena de Bertodano, a journalist specialising in interviews for publications such as The Times, The Telegraph and The Observer. She has interviewed more than 1,000 people over the last 25 years, including the Dalai Lama, Meryl Streep, George Soros, Ringo Starr, Umberto Eco, Kurt Vonnegut and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Event in Spanish
Free admission for students
Price: £7.50
With the collaboration of the Cajasol Foundation and Galaxia Gutenberg publishing house
