Guadalajara International Book Fair

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Special activities for professionals from Spain, Guest of Honor

Activities for Professionals
Special activities for professionals from Spain, Guest of Honor
Reading is a right!

If we consider reading to be a necessity, a vital activity for human beings (because other fundamental personal rights depend directly on it), then we must agree that it should be considered a fundamental right that needs to be promoted and protected. Thus, the dialogue will address how we should build that reality of reading as a right: what does it consist of? Does this right have any limits? Who are the subjects involved in reading (writers, editors, illustrators, translators, booksellers, readers, etc.)? How should public officials act? Questions to give content to the idea of reading as a human right and the need to promote reading and the world of books.

Participants: Fernando Flores, Mario Obrero

Moderator: María José Gálvez

Fernando Flores

Invitado de Honor

Flores is a professor of Constitutional Law and a member of the Human Rights Institute at the Universitat de València. His teaching and research interests focus on fundamental rights, particularly in recent years on the rights of older people, cultural rights (the right to read), and the pedagogy of human rights. He has authored several publications on these topics. He is the co-director of the Cine y Derecho collection (Tirant lo Blanch Publishing).

Mario Obrero

Invitado de Honor

(Madrid, 2003)

Obrero began writing at the age of seven and studied Humanities at the La Senda public high school in Getafe.

He has published the books Carpintería de armónicos (2018, 14th Premio de Poesía Joven Félix Grande Award; Universidad Popular José Hierro), Ese ruido ya pájaro (2019, Ediciones Entricíclopes), Peachtree City (2021, 33rd Premio Loewe a la Creación Joven Award; Visor), Cerezas sobre la muerte (2022, La Bella Varsovia; Premio Nacional de Juventud Award in the Culture category) and Tiempos mágicos (2024, La Bella Varsovia).

He hosted the first two seasons of the literary program “Un país para leerlo”, broadcast on La 2 (Radio Television Española), and regularly collaborates with the “Gente despierta” program, on Radio Nacional de España.

Other activities involving the participant:
The gift of the poem

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.