About thirty authors, including the Nicaraguans Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli, the Argentine Martín Caparrós, and the Mexicans Juan Villoro and Jorge Volpi, will participate in a new edition of the Centroamérica Cuenta Festival, from September 10 to 19 in three Spanish cities: La Rinconada (Seville), Madrid, and Barcelona.
Founded in Managua in 2013 by Sergio Ramírez, Cervantes Prize 2017, the festival has, since 2019, become an itinerant platform. Starting in 2021, when Ramírez settled in Madrid due to his forced exile from Nicaragua, two editions a year have been held, one in Spain and another in a Central American and Caribbean country. This year, the first edition took place in Panama last May, and now it is Spain’s turn.
The first stop, on September 10 and 11, will be La Rinconada, hosting for the second consecutive year, with two days dedicated to narrative, journalism, society, and creativity, according to organizers who announced it in a press release this Tuesday. In Madrid, from September 14 to 18, the program will bring together the cited authors and others such as Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador), Rosa Ribas (Spain), Álvaro Enrigue (Mexico), Regina José Galindo (Guatemala), Laura Chinchilla (former president of Costa Rica), Carlos Fernando Chamorro (Nicaragua), Claudia Paz y Paz (Guatemala) and Laura Alcoba (Argentina).
In addition, there will be meetings with seven reading clubs: six in Madrid and one in Barcelona; and also a workshop led by Cristián Alarcón under the title “Performative Journalism: New Narratives of the Real” on Tuesday, September 15, Wednesday, September 16, and Thursday, September 17, at CentroCentro in Madrid. Performative journalism is a hybrid genre that combines chronicle and journalistic investigation with the language of the body and the stage to tell a story that makes an impact. This workshop is designed to work with eight pairs consisting of a journalist and a performing artist.
Democratic institutions, horror and crime literature, historical memory, as well as the practice of journalism from exile, will be among the topics addressed by the participants. Among the main venues are the Instituto Cervantes, Casa de América and CentroCentro, in addition to bookstores and municipal libraries.
The program will conclude in Barcelona on September 18 and 19, with activities at Casa América Cataluña, Librería Finestres and the Gabriel García Márquez Library; and meetings with Ramírez, Castellanos Moya, Enrigue and Laura Alcoba, as well as Mexican Emiliano Monge and Colombian Claudia Amador.
“For us, as a festival, it is important to reach new venues and audiences to strengthen the cultural and literary link between Ibero-America and different regions of Spain, while at the same time promoting dialogue on the major issues of the region,” said Claudia Neira Bermúdez, director of Centroamérica Cuenta. The festival has previously been held in Costa Rica, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, as well as in Spain and Panama.
Sergio Ramírez lives in Madrid after the Nicaraguan prosecutor’s office issued an arrest warrant against him in September 2021 while he was in Spain, and in the wake of his clash with the regime of President Daniel Ortega.
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More information: Full program of the Centroamérica Cuenta festival in Spain.