Luis Mateo Díez

Invitado de Honor

(Villablino, León, 1942) is a writer and member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) since his election in 2000. He co-founded the poetry magazine Claraboya and, in 1972, his poetry book Señales de humo was published.

His published novels include: Apócrifo del clavel y la espina (1974 Café Gijón Award), La fuente de la edad (1986, Premio Nacional de Narrativa and Premio de la Crítica awards), Las horas completas (1990), La ruina del cielo. Un obituario (1999, Premio Nacional de Narrativa and Premio de la Crítica awards), Los frutos de la niebla (2008, Premio de la Crítica de Castilla y León award) and El amo de la pista (2024). El reino de Celama (2003) brings together his three novels set in this imaginary land, and in Fábulas del sentimiento (2013), he grouped the four short volumes of novels from that narrative cycle.

His short stories include: Relato de Babia (1981), El árbol de los cuentos. Cuentos reunidos (1973-2004) (2006), La cabeza en llamas (2012, Francisco Umbral Award), Celama (un recuento) (2022) and El limbo de los cines (2023, with illustrations by Emilio Urberuaga).

 His books of non-fiction and diverse genres include El porvenir de la ficción (1992), La mano del sueño (Algunas consideraciones sobre el arte narrativo, la imaginación y la memoria) (Induction speech into the RAE, given on May 20, 2001), Orillas de la ficción (2010) and Los desayunos del Café Borenes (2015).

In addition to those already mentioned, he has received the Premio Castilla y León de las Letras and the Premio de Literatura de la Comunidad de Madrid awards. In 2020, he received the award Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas, and in 2023, the Cervantes Award.

Other activities involving the participant:

Tradition and modernity in the Spanish and Mexican short story
Bibliodiversity, reading and critical thinking. A meeting with Lorenzo Silva

Luis García Montero

Invitado de Honor

(Granada, 1958) has been the director of the Instituto Cervantes since 2018. He is a professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Granada.

The awards he has received include: Premio Adonáis (1982), Premio Nacional de Literatura (1994), Premio Nacional de la Crítica (2003), Premio del Gremio de Libreros de Madrid (2009), Premio Poetas del Mundo Latino (2010, México), Premio Paralelo 0 (2018, Ecuador), Golden Antelope International Poetry Prize (2021, China) and Premio Montale Fuori di Casa (2023, Italy).

His poetry books include Y ahora ya eres dueño del Puente de Brooklyn (1980), El jardín extranjero (1983), Habitaciones separadas (1980), Completamente viernes (1998), La intimidad de la serpiente (2003), Vista cansada (2008), A puerta cerrada (2017), No puedes ser así. Breve historia del mundo (2021), Un año y tres meses (2022) and Almudena (2024).

In non-fiction, he has published ¿Por qué no es útil la literatura? (1993, in collaboration with Antonio Muñoz Molina), Un lector llamado Federico García Lorca (2016), Las palabras rotas (2019) and La realidad de una esperanza. Galdós, la memoria y la poesía (2020), and critical editions of García Lorca (1992 y 2017), Alberti (1988), Carlos Barral (1997) and Luis Rosales (2005).

He is the author of the novels Impares, fila 13 (written with Felipe Benítez Reyes); Mañana no será lo que Dios quiera (2009), a novelized biography of Ángel González; No me cuentes tu vida (2012) and Someone speaks your name (2014).

He has studied the work of authors such as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Rosalía de Castro, Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, Luis Rosales, Rubén Bonifaz Nuño, Francisco Ayala and José Emilio Pacheco. He also has honorary degrees from the universities of San Agustín and Ricardo Palma (Peru), Pontificia Católica Universidad de Valparaíso (Chile) and Córdoba (Argentina), and is an honorary professor at the University of Mar del Plata (Argentina).

He recently received the Premio Internacional Carlos Fuentes a la Creación Literaria (2024) in the Spanish Language, awarded by the Secretariat of Culture and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Other activities involving the participant:

"Cry to Rome", a poem by Federico García Lorca. Published in native languages
Journeys. Mexico: memory of hospitality
Spanish in the world

María José Gálvez

Invitado de Honor

(Valencia, 1975) She is currently the general director of Books, Comics, and Reading at the Ministry of Culture and Sport of the Government of Spain, where she has the following duties: develop and implement plans, programs, and actions to promote and disseminate literary creation and translation, with specific measures for the comic medium; enhance the development of the publishing industry and the preservation of bibliodiversity and linguistic plurality; and foster the promotion of reading in all areas, particularly through library coordination, contributing to the balanced and innovative development of libraries in their public role.

Among other roles, she is a member of the boards of the National Library of Spain, the Max Aub Foundation, the Francisco Brines Foundation, and the María Zambrano Foundation. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Cervantes Institute.

She has a PhD in Law from the Universidad de Valencia (with predoctoral research stays at Harvard University, the University of Pisa, and the Free University of Brussels), and she is an expert in Constitutional Law, having completed a specialization course at the Center for Political and Constitutional Studies in Madrid. She has been an associate professor of Constitutional Law at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and a tutor-professor at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

She was the editorial director of Tirant lo Blanch Publishing for several years, and also coordinated the editorial production of the Tirant group in various Spanish-speaking countries.

In the institutional field, she served as deputy director of the Office of the President of the Congress of Deputies and as an advisor in various offices of the First Vice Presidency of the Government.

Other activities involving the participant:

Opening Ceremony
Reading is a right!
One hundred years of modern publishing in Galicia