The 39th annual edition of the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) drew to a close on December 7, having received more than 950,000 visitors over the nine-day event—a roughly 5% increase from 2024. The event featured 648 book presentations and was attended by 18,400 publishing professionals and 2,790 publishing houses from 64 countries, as well as 165 literary agents, making the fair the largest on record.

Barcelona gets its flowers

The delegation of guest of honor Barcelona included more than 150 publishers, almost 80 more than attended in 2024 when the guest nation of honor was Spain.

“We have reasserted ourselves as a literary city and showcased the Barcelona of today in all its magnitude,” Esteve Caramés, director of cultural programs in the Barcelona city government and part of the city’s delegation to FIL, told PW. “We’re a publishing capital, and the work publishers have done in the FIL is very important to reaffirm the importance of writing and reading in Barcelona, a bilingual city that has projected itself here in a very strong way, and the impact of the FIL in Barcelona has also been very strong.”

Caramés highlighted that the Barcelona pavilion’s bookstore boasted a meticulously curated selection of books, many of which are difficult to procure outside of Spain. Unsold copies will be housed in the Guadalajara University’s library.

The final Saturday also saw the Barcelona delegation recreate the Saint Jordi festival, when, every April 23, booksellers set up stalls in the streets of the Catalonian capital and gift roses to readers.

The delegation included not just authors but also literary agents continuing the tradition, started by the late Carmen Balcells, of representation of Latin American authors in Barcelona. Balcells is credited with contributing to the so-called “Latin American Boom” as authors from the region earned global fame. The agents affirmed their continuing interest in Latin American authors, with Claudia Calva of the Antonia Kerrigan Literary Agency saying that the agency is “always interested in receiving manuscripts from this part of the world,” a view shared by María Lynch from the Casanovas & Lynch agency.

Izaskun Arretxe, director of literature at the Institut Ramon Llull in Barcelona, which promotes the internationalization of Catalan language and culture, highlighted the importance of the city’s participation as a showcase for the Catalan language, in which 74% of the authors invited to the fair write, and to promote the translation of works from Catalan into other languages. In 2024, she said, 348 Catalan-language titles were translated, of which around 35% were translated into Spanish, for which she identified Latin America as “a strategic territory.” Others were translated into Italian, French and English.

According to the Catalan publishing chamber, which represents 400 publishers, the region produces 54% of the books published in Spain, 65% of the country’s children’s books, and 80% of the comics. And in a bid to increase interaction between Catalonia and Latin America, Barcelona’s mayor Jaume Colboni announced the launch of a three-month residency in the city for Latin American authors financed by the municipal government.

Programs and pavilions

This year’s fair also included an audio forum for the second consecutive year, in which industry players discussed the opportunities and challenges in the segment, with a strong focus on audio for children. FIL also hosted a forum focused on artificial intelligence for the first time, with panel discussions regarding AI’s implications for the publishing industry as well as for the mental health of young people using its applications.

The comic and graphic novel pavilion, which runs during the final four days of the fair, also featured a strong presence of authors and illustrators from Catalonia and other regions of Spain. Panel discussions focused on independent artists’ and publishers’ struggle to survive and how the genre has “escaped the ghetto,” according to Spain’s Manuel Cráneo, founder of comic book publisher Editorial Demo, by transitioning from a genre for children to a more intellectual sphere.

And the children’s pavilion, FIL Niños, broke attendance records, this year receiving more than 198,000 visitors over the nine days of the fair.

Authors in the spotlight

French-Lebanese author Amin Maalouf won FIL’s annual Romance Languages Prize, and offered a talk and Q&A with more than 1,000 spectators during the fair, during which he highlighted the importance of reading.

“Literature has a central role in this century,” Maalouf said. “Its first mission is to make us aware of the world’s complexity. The second, to convince us that we have a common destiny: or we survive together, or we disappear together. And thirdly, to throw light onto the essential human values. Literature can repair the present and imagine the future.”

Another big literary name visiting the FIL, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, also highlighted the importance of reading, describing literature as “an act of radical imagination.”

Barcelona-based Mexican novelist Juan Pablo Villalobos gave a talk about the Catalan capital as the haunt of a long tradition of Mexican authors who take advantage of the city’s vibrant literary scene and its place as the epicenter of Spanish-language publishing.

And Uruguayan author Fernanda Trías was awarded the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, awarded annually a woman novelist writing in Spanish, for her book El monte de las furias. This marked the second time she has won the award, after her 2021 win for Pink Slime. “Narrating ourselves is not a whim,” Trías said in her acceptance speech, “but rather a way of reaffirming our existence.”

Italy will be the guest nation of honor at the 2026 fair, which runs November 28–December 6.