CULTURE-SPAIN: Half of All Adults Never Read Books

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, May 26 2000 (IPS) - Half of all adults in Spain have not read a single book since finishing school, according to a study by the Federation of Publishers released at the opening of Madrid’s annual book fair Friday.

Between now and the close of the book fair on Jun 11, at least 2.5 million visitors are expected to file through, buying more than 500,000 books at a total cost of around seven million dollars, based on last year’s figures.

For publishers, the low reading rates are partly compensated by the fact that one out of four Spaniards purchase two to three books a month, as well as by sales to Latin America, which are essential to the survival of local publishing houses.

In Spain, over 50,000 new titles are published every year, along with new editions of some 230,000 best-sellers and other books still in demand.

Of the 52,493 titles published in 1998, only 17.7 percent were literary works, novels and poetry. The rest were educational texts, workbooks, self-help books and other kinds of non-fiction.

Although more than 300 publishing houses have set up stands at the book fair, just four firms account for 70 percent of the sector’s annual turnover. The northeastern region of Catalonia publishes the most books – 23.7 percent of the total – followed by the city of Madrid (20.7 percent), and the southern region of Andalusia (12.5 percent).

The average 2.5 million visitors make the Madrid book fair one of the three largest in the world, said Jesús García Bayón, who has run the book fair for the past 20 years and will retire at the end of this year’s fair.

Writer Juan José Millás said it was only natural for writers to complain that people did not read enough, because in their view, “it is impossible to read enough.”

Another Spanish author, Josefina Aldecoa, blamed television for keeping reading levels down. And recently named minister of culture and education Pilar del Castillo stressed that “it is essential to instill the habit of reading in children.”

The book fair, for which sponsors have shelled out millions of dollars, will be covered around the clock by local TV stations, and presentations, seminars and conferences will be held.

Meanwhile, expressions of solidarity will not be lacking.

The ‘Fundación Once para América Latina’, whose patron of honour is King Juan Carlos of Spain, presented the second edition of “Solidarity Stories” written by 20 renowned authors, including Héctor Aguilar Camín and Jorge Edwards, with drawings by four well-known illustrators.

The receipts from the sales of “Solidarity Stories” will go in their entirety towards helping disabled people left homeless or otherwise affected by the severe flooding that claimed over 10,000 lives in Venezuela last December.

The revenues from the first edition of the book, presented at last year’s fair, went towards rebuilding the homes of 36 families left on the streets of Honduras by hurricane Mitch in late 1998.

Among the patrons of ‘Fundación Once’ figure renowned Latin Americans like Costa Rican Nobel laureate Oscar Arias, Cuban dancer Alicia Alonso, the president of the Inter-American Development Bank Enrique Iglesias and Chilean lawmaker Isabel Allende, as well as former Portuguese president Mario Soares and former Spanish prime minister Adolfo Suárez.

This year, ‘Fundación Once’ has set up a stand presenting conventional books as well as titles printed in Braille for the blind, “talking” books, and books in relief, printed with plastic pages using the Thermoform technique.

Another expression of solidarity is the “Books for Five Duros” (a ‘duro’ is a five-peseta coin). For the third year in a row, collection boxes have been set out for the book-buying public to deposit their change. At the end of the fair, the money collected will be raffled among participating non-governmental organisations.

In 1997, the money collected went to the non-governmental SOS Children’s Villages for the training of house-mothers, in 1998 to Doctors of the World, and in 1999 to ‘Ayuda en Acción’, which used the funds to produce a study on social exclusion and marginalisation in education.