Spain in English

Sitges ‘Vila del Llibre’ literary festival kicks off

This weekend, Sitges marks the first edition of Sitges, Vila del Llibre, a literary festival organised by the Sitges Town Council with the support of the ‘Xarxa de Viles del Llibre de Catalunya’.

The aim of the event is to create various cultural activities that promote reading, and the different expressions linked to literature, with the intention of continuity within the local calendar.

A central element of the festival’s programme is a market with the participation of around 50, mostly independent, publishers and bookstores – including some with the Sitgetà label.

The fair will be located along the promenade, between the statue of Dr. Benaprès and the Hotel ME – which together with the Hotel Sunway – forms the two points where a large part of the planned activities take place, taking advantage of the Terramar area as a new space for events of this type.

Presentations of literary novelties or exhibitions such as Sitges, Vila by the photographer and writer Xulio Ricardo Trigo, will also feature in the festival. Sitges, Vila is a graphic review of the first five years of the ‘Xarxa de Viles del Llibre de Catalunya’, based on a selection of 33 portraits of authors who have visited the Viles del Llibre in different parts of Catalonia. The exhibition was inaugurated last weekend as a pretext for this first edition of the festival in Sitges.

The festival programme also features cultural routes through the town centre, as well as family activities.

Sitges Vila del Llibre

One of the highlights of Sitges, Vila del Llibre is the Cicle Sitges (Sitges Cycle) – made up of six lectures devised by the festival’s curator and journalist, Jordi Barrachina. The lectures, which reflect on the town 100 years ago, will consider factors that helped define the image of the Sitges we know today, from ‘Santiago Rusiñol and the modernists, but also from the cradle of a new popular intelligentsia – from the urban transformation of the Paseo Marítimo in the 20th century, which brought new people and new ways of thinking’.

The Cicle Sitges will begin this Friday at 6.30pm at the Prado Casino Theatre with the opening dialogue Del manifest groc a la Cubana (From the Yellow Manifesto to the Cuban Manifesto). On Saturday and Sunday, it will move to the ME Hotel with five more lectures.

Other activities will take place in order to promote the commercial fabric of the town. In the centre of Sitges, and the area of Poble Sec, 20 shops have come together to form a game of clues – based on discovering twenty ‘verbal enigmas’ – created by the writer Màrius Serra. The participants who solve all the ‘enigmas’ will be entered into a draw for a lot of books that will be held on Sunday at noon.

Further to this, 17 local restaurants and bars have designed menus and tapas inspired by various literary works, that can be enjoyed until 25 April – in a proposal designed jointly by the Council’s Department of Tourism and the Hospitality Guild.

Inauguration of the photographic exhibition at ME Terramar, on Saturday. (L’Eco)

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