Thousands of people enjoyed the Cultural and Literary Programme offered in the Spanish Pavilion and outside the premises.

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The 74th Frankfurter Buchmesse reaffirmed its position as the most important international meeting place for the book and media industry with 93,000 trade visitors, 87,000 private visitors, 4,000 exhibitors from 95 countries, 6,400 media representatives and 104,000 users of its website (buchmesse.de). Many of them took part in our wide-ranging and varied cultural and literary programme during this great literary festival.

During the five days of the Fair, both professionals and the general public enjoyed the 2,000 m2 of the Spanish Pavilion. They were able to witness a vibrant, multilingual and diverse book ecosystem, both in terms of the size of its companies and the variety of subjects they publish, and participated in a multitude of professional meetings, literary conversations and musical performances. Nearly 200 representatives of the great Spanish literary industry: writers, publishers, translators, booksellers, illustrators, and journalists… accompanied us.

The space also had an important institutional presence: Their Majesties the King and Queen of Spain, the President of the German Republic, Frank-Walter Steinmeier; the First Vice-President and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño; the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares; the Minister of Culture and Sport, Miquel Iceta, and the German Minister of Culture, Claudia Roth, were some of the authorities who visited the Spanish Pavilion in Frankfurt.

An emotional ceremony, held on the last day of the Frankfurt Book Fair, in the Festhalle in the German city, brought the publishing event to a close. Spain presented the Guest Scroll to Slovenia, which will be Guest of Honour 2023. Galician writer Manuel Rivas and Slovenian Drago Jančar, among others, took part in the handover ceremony. María José Gálvez, Director General of Books and Reading Promotion of the Ministry of Culture and Sport, was in charge of handing over the baton.

This was her assessment of the Fair: “We have honoured Spain’s great literary tradition and offered a stage to new and promising voices. We hope that the newly created and deepened ties in and around Frankfurt with readers, publishers and book lovers from all over the world will last for a long time to come”. “Spain’s participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair as Guest of Honour has allowed us to show, a little better, a modern, pluralistic country, with a mature democracy and a commitment to civic values, innovative and creative, and a quality and diverse literature that seeks new readers around the world.”

Spain, Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2022 project is run by the Ministry of Culture and Sport through the Directorate General for Books and Reading Promotion, together with Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Spanish Publishers’ Guild Federation.

José Andrés Torres Mora, president of Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), considers: “The previous work carried out by many people and institutions over the years has been essential to Spain’s success as a guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In this work, I would like to highlight the translation aid programmes, which are essential for the internationalisation of our literature. It is also important to point out the efforts of all the other sectors of our culture: performing arts, visual arts, and music, to brilliantly accompany Spanish literature in Germany.

Outside the Spanish Pavilion, the fair featured 320 stands of Spanish exhibitors, including the space of the Federation of Spanish Publishers’ Guilds (Federación de Gremios de Editores de España). Its president, Daniel Fernández, says: “Spain’s presence at the Frankfurt Book Fair as Guest Country has been very positive. We have noted a renewed interest in Spanish literature, both fiction and essays. Nor can we forget children’s and young people’s literature and comics. We have also been able to see that there is a special interest in authors and younger generations of writers. During the fair, we have shown and demonstrated why Spain is a publishing power of the first order and how its culture is integrated into the best tradition and the most hopeful modernity of European culture”.

Spain, Guest of Honour project, curated by Elvira Marco, has enabled the book sector to break into new markets. Elvira Marco, curator of the project: “Spain, Guest of Honour project has fulfilled its objectives by showcasing the richness and diversity of our literature and culture. Established authors together with new and promising voices have come together on the stages of the Pavilion, which has captivated the public during the five days of the Fair. Writers, publishers and book professionals felt represented and proud of the final result. The German public, as well as publishers, booksellers, translators and, above all, readers, also enthusiastically welcomed our literary and cultural proposal, which is far removed from clichés. As in the best stories, the Spain Guest of Honour project has moved us and has given us an unforgettable ending.

María José Gálvez, Director General of Books and Reading Promotion reaffirms the project’s desire for continuity: “The literary, cultural and institutional proposal that we have carried out together as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair has meant putting the international spotlight on our literature and on our country. And we want this visibility and, therefore, the opportunities generated, to have continuity, so we are going to continue working to provide greater stability to translation aid and to intensify the strategic international presence of authors and publishers at fairs and festivals. In just a few weeks we will be at the Ljubljana book fair and at the beginning of the year we will be at the Calcutta book fair. Frankfurt has surely been the best possible setting to celebrate and vindicate our literature.