Terrassa will host on November 6 and 7 the celebration of Crim i Misteri, the noir crime novel festival organized by the association Objetivo Más Letras. The festival’s third edition will feature two central days and additional complementary events to promote culture, language, or social action in the territory.
With this third edition the festival becomes solidified within the annual noir calendar, featuring a prominent lineup of authors — including Oriol Canals, Tura Soler, Toni Hill, Benito Olmo, Rafa Melero, Sònia Guillén, and Josep Gòrriz, among others — and a program with initiatives for all audiences.
Main days at the Central Library and the Municipal Auditorium
The two central days of the festival will take place on Friday, November 6, in the afternoon, and on Saturday, the 7th, with sessions in the morning and afternoon. All festival activities are free and open to the public.
The Central Library of Terrassa will host the festival premiere (Friday at 6:00 PM) with a debate panel dedicated to “the crime scene moved to fiction.” Local authors Mònica Bofill and Sònia Guillén will participate alongside fellow writers Nacho Herrero and Rafa Melero.
On Saturday, the Municipal Auditorium will welcome the public for a full-day program, with five additional thematic discussions around the noir genre and with the participation of writers, both male and female, and specialists.
In addition to the participants in the thematic panels, the Municipal Auditorium will host other authors with whom the public will be able to share time, purchase and have their books signed.
Award for Catalan literary career and youth literary contest
During the festival, winners of two cultural promotion initiatives will be announced. First, the award for ‘Best Career in Catalan Letters’.
Then, the finalists and the prize for the best youth noir short story, a competition in which students aged 15 to 18 from Terrassa’s high schools participated in the months leading up to the festival.
The awards are supported and sponsored by Club Natació Terrassa and the Ateneu Terrassenc, leading entities in the city.
T-Crime, the intergenerational game to solve a crime
In addition to the main days at the Central Library and the Municipal Auditorium, Crim i Misteri Terrassa has this year premiered T-Crime, a pioneering game in which groups of participants from different generations investigate a crime, with the collaboration of the Seniors Service (Gent Gran) and the Youth Service (Gent Jove) of the Terrassa City Council.
T-Crime also involves Terrassa’s municipal libraries or El Trencadís, a free-access digital repository of the Red de Bibliotecas Municipales (XBM) of the Barcelona province.
The game has been developed over the last month with teams researching and gathering clues, and it will conclude during Crim i Misteri with the resolution of the final clues and the announcement of the winning team.
Activities in the municipal libraries and a charitable initiative
In addition to the main days at the Central Library and the Municipal Auditorium, Crim i Misteri Terrassa will feature other initiatives and activities throughout the festival week.
Thus, the municipal libraries will collaborate in organizing activities around the noir genre and with participation from reading clubs and other proposals.
On November 2, the District 2 Library will host the talk “Reading, the most secret superpower.” It will be a meeting with author Josep Gòrriz and also author and curator of the festival, Almudena Almagro, to highlight the benefits of reading for the child audience.
As in previous editions, the festival will promote blood donation in collaboration with Banc de Sang. Donors from November 2 to 14 will be entered into a draw for a set of crime novels.
Institutional support and collaborating entities
The Crim i Misteri Terrassa festival receives support from the City Council and the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (Generalitat of Catalonia) to enable the various planned events. The Culture Service and the entire municipal administration have been involved and have backed the project since its first edition.
Additionally, this edition also counts on the collaboration of Club Natació Terrassa and Ateneu Terrassenc.