A WELSH arts festival that has gone global, and México's largest book fair, have become the third recipients of the 2020 Princess of Asturias Awards – Spain's answer to the Nobel Prizes.
Recently, it was confirmed that the Concordance Award would go to front-line healthcare workers front-line healthcare workers for their sterling efforts in tackling the Covid-19 outbreak, and that the Arts Award would be granted jointly to film soundtrack composers Ennio Morricone and John Williams, whose works include the music for Star Wars and well-known gangster films and spaghetti westerns.
The Communication and Humanities Award will be split between the International Book Fair (FIL) in Guadalajara, México – the closest large city to the popular holiday zone of Puerto Vallarta, in the west, and, curiously, where Queen Letizia worked as a reporter whilst studying her PhD – and the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts.
The FIL Guadalajara was founded 33 years ago and has become the biggest literature festival in the whole of Latin America and the second-largest in the world.
Launched in 1988 in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, the Hay Festival (first picture, from Wikimedia Commons) started as a small cultural fête and has now become a famous international affair, lasting 11 days at a time – from late May to early June – with over 700 events taking place including debates, interviews and concerts, attracting over 270,000 people.
Former US president Bill Clinton called it 'the Woodstock for the mind'.
Hay-on-Wye is often dubbed 'Book Town' – with its 1,800 residents, it has one of the highest ratios of book shops per inhabitant on the planet, especially second-hand book shops, and has become a tourist attraction in itself, not just among avid readers.
Nowadays, it is organised by the Hay Festival Foundation and, from 2006, has been celebrated on three continents, including with one in Spain – the Hay Festival Segovia, in the Castilla y Léon city famous for its huge Roman aqueduct.
Others are held in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), Querétaro (México), Arequipa (Perú) and Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates).
The FIL Guadalajara (second picture, from Wikimedia Commons) has become a social, political and cultural festival focusing on the world of reading, drawing in over 2,400 publishing firms from an average of 45 countries to the city's exhibition centre, which occupies a total of 10 acres, and brings in over 800,000 visitors when it takes place annually between November and December.
It includes hundreds of book presentations, activities for publishing industry professionals, arts and entertainment events, musical events, and thousands of business meetings connected with the book industry.
The Princess of Asturias Foundation, which is behind the awards that are named after heir to the throne Princess Leonor, says both these festivals are to be commended for their major rôle in promoting and encouraging people to read for pleasure and for personal learning.
Last year, the Communication and Humanities Award went to Madrid's El Prado museum, one of the capital's 'Big Three' art galleries along with the Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Reina Sofía.
