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

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

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

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

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

Due to a last-minute incident, María Dueñas will participate via video link

Free admission for students

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

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, obe of the writers participating in this publication, Juan Bonilla, and the book's editor, Erna von der Walde will talk to Cristina Fuentes La Roche, international director of the Hay Festival.

Event in Spanish

Free admission for students

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

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

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

Creative and cultural industries have shown great resilience in the wake of the pandemic, with sustained growth and a strong contribution to GDP in countries such as Spain and the United Kingdom (5.2% of GVA in 2023). In addition to their economic impact, they have a profound effect on social inclusion, cultural preservation, community identity and well-being. They are clear drivers of development that must be promoted as an alternative to the speculative economy.

To explore these variables, Hay Festival Forum Sevilla brought together Javi Esteban, a Seville-based producer and cultural promoter who has directed iconic festivals and shows, for a conversation with Alberto Grimaldi, a journalist and editor of the Andalusian business daily ‘El Conciso’.

Grimaldi is currently deputy editor of Diario de Sevilla and specializes in reporting on economics and business, as well as politics and public administration.

Free admission for students

Event in Spanish