Guests of Honour at Feria del Libro de Madrid: The Cases of '¡AleManía!' and 'France como un libro abierto'

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyse the presence of Germany and France as Guests of Honour at Feria del Libro de Madrid with regard to the interdependences between the book fair and its visiting countries. By means of expert interviews with the organisers, I studied the processes of selection, the objectives and the realisation of ¡AleManía! in 2011 and France como un libro abierto in 2016, as well as their accordance with the idea of bibliodiversity. In the past, the Guest of Honour seems to have played the role of an additional financial sponsor providing also further legitimacy for the public sales fair through its cultural programme. The guest countries in fact offer a variety of cultural and literary events at the venue, even though the selection of invited authors consists of actors with a strong or even dominant position in the respective literary field and therefore does not represent its diversity in every respect.