The Guadalajara International Book Fair and the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities 2020

In the course of its online meeting, the Jury for the 2020 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, composed of Luis María Anson Oliart, Alberto Edgardo Barbieri, Irene Cano Piquero, Gabriela Cañas Pita de la Vega, Aurora Egido Martínez, Taciana Fisac Badell, Elsa González Díaz de Ponga, Santiago González Suárez, Alan Goodman, Álex Grijelmo García, Miguel Ángel Liso Tejada, Rosa María Mateo Isasi, Emilio Morenatti Fernández, Álex Pina Calafi, Ana Santos Aramburo and María Sefidari Huici, chaired by Víctor García de la Concha and with Alberto Anaut González acting as secretary, has decided to confer the 2020 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities on the Guadalajara International Book Fair and the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts for representing the most important meeting points worldwide for books, writers, readers and culture.

Promoted by the university of the Mexican city of Guadalajara, the Guadalajara International Book Fair has become a universal literary phenomenon. With enormous popular impact and mass participation, it constitutes a major focus for the promotion of the Spanish language. Launched in 1988 in the small Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye, the Hay Festival has brought together readers and writers through its different editions, which have spread to America, Europe and Near East since 2006.

Both events bring the most varied publics together around Literature and congregate hundreds of thousands of visitors every year with the aim of fomenting the habit of the reading. The Guadalajara Fair and the Hay Festival further contribute decisively to strengthening cultural industries and making them sustainable.

9th June 2020