Hay Festival Segovia announces first names ahead of fourteenth annual event

Hay Festival Segovia, Spain’s largest ideas event, will, for the 14th year, with IE University, supported by the IE Foundation, continuing as a principal collaborator and academic partner. The festival, which will take place between September 20 and September 22, 2019, today announced the first events, which will include Inua Ellams, Jeanne Gang, Adam Michnik, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Maite Pagazaurtundúa and Fernando Savater, among others.

Among the events unveiled today that IE University will be participating in will be a conversation between Martha Thorne, Dean of IE School of Architecture and Design, and US architect and urban planner Jeanne Gang, the only architect on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of 2019. Gang defines herself as a relationship builder because she focuses her work on encouraging interaction between people and cities.

Segovia, an accessible city with a long history of harmonious coexistence, will once again host Spain’s leading literature and arts festival. Tickets are already on sale through www.hayfestival.org/segovia and the full program will be announced on June 25.

“The festival will put to the test, and facilitate, an exercise in democracy.”

Hay Festival Segovia will take over public spaces, squares, gardens, streets, orchards, convents and palaces to create a latter day Agora in the historic city, with meeting points for the exchange of ideas and concerns, storytelling, discussion and love. Sheila Cremaschi, director of the Hay Festival Segovia, explains: “The festival will put to the test, and facilitate, an exercise in democracy, so necessary in these uncertain times we live in; a place where open spaces propitiate open minds.”

Spanish thinker and writer Fernando Savater will discuss the current threat to democratic freedoms throughout Europe with Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of leading Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, along with Maite Pagazaurtundúa, former president of the Spain’s Victims of Terrorism Foundation and a member of the European Parliament. The three share their perspectives on how people cope with the denial of basic rights at times of political tension and pressure. Against a backdrop of resurgent extreme nationalism, the three defend the value of civic and democratic debate throughout Europe as the only way to safeguard peace.

Antonio Muñoz Molina, one of Spain’s best-known writers and winner of the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters, will present his latest novel: Tus pasos en la escalera (Your Steps on the Staircase), a disturbing psychological thriller that focuses on the impact of September 11 on New Yorkers and how the emotional footprint of the event persists even when the characters relocate. He will talk with Ana Gavín, general director of the José Manuel Lara Foundation.

Graphic artist, dramatist and poet Inua Ellams is one of the most interesting emerging creative talents in the United Kingdom. The creator of the Midnight Run, a way to explore a city from dusk to dawn, he will share the stage with Peter Florence, founder and director of Hay Festival, to talk about his multifaceted artistic career.