More than 800,000 visitors attended the Guadalajara International Book Fair in 2019.Héctor Guerrero
The Federation of Publishers Guilds of Spain (FGEE) has announced that it will not be present at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico.
The event, scheduled to be held this year between November 28 and December 6, is one of the main references in the Spanish-speaking literary world.
The FGEE has pointed out the current health crisis with covid-19 as the main cause of its cancellation and that before making the decision a good number of editors had given up attending the appointment.
The FIL of Guadalajara, which this year won the Princess of Asturias Award together with the Hay Festival in the category of Communication and Humanities, thus joins the list of similar events affected by the pandemic.
Both the Frankfurt Book Fair and Liber Barcelona 2020, both scheduled for October, have chosen to be held virtually due to the difficulties and risk that an international agglomeration entails in the face of the pandemic.
Liber, which is promoted by the FGEE, has already indicated that this year it will have more than 400 publishing houses participating in the event remotely.
Other important absences for the Mexican fair are the book giant Penguin Random House and the Mexican label Ediciones Cal y Arena, which had already declared in July that they would not participate.
For its part, Editorial Planeta maintains for the moment its promise to be at the event, albeit in a reduced way, while Anagrama has not informed of its decision in this regard.
Last year, the Guadalajara FIL attracted 828,000 visitors to the city on the Pacific coast, with 2,417 publishers from 48 countries and nearly 19,000 professionals and 300 literary agents.
