In the past, in the warmth of the hearthside of each village home, families would share ancestral tales in spoken form, reviving and strengthening their ties to their land. In Castilla y León, Asturias and Galicia, this tradition is called El Filandón, and it is still practised today in some villages. The distinguished writer from León, Luis Mateo Díez has nurtured this tracing of roots and attachments in a special way. Together with his fellow countrymen and writers, José María Merino and Juan Pedro Aparicio, Díez considers how El Filandón epitomises why belonging to a place can leave a powerful mark on people. Indeed, the 1984 film El Filandón brought three of his stories along with two by other authors, to the screen with Díez himself as the narrator.

Luis Mateo Díez, most recent winner of the Cervantes Prize 2023, is a member of the Real Academia Española. He is the only author in the Spanish language to have won the National Fiction Prize twice and the Critics' Prize twice, with his novels La fuente de la edad (1986) and La ruina del cielo (1999). José María Merino is also a member of the Real Academia Española. Among other awards, he has won the National Prize for Literature, the Critics' Prize (1986), the Children's and Young People's Literature Prize (1993) and the Narrative Prize (2013). He is the author of numerous novels, essays, short stories and poetry. Juan Pedro Aparicio received the Castilla y León Prize for Literature in 2012 in recognition of his career and his Retratos de Ambigú won the Nadal Prize in 1988. As well as novels, he has also written essays, journalistic articles, short stories and travel books.

The event is presented by the Sevillian poet and journalist from El Diario de Sevilla Braulio Ortiz.

Event in Spanish