Nation and City Branding vs. Literature Marketing?

Spain, Catalonia and its Capitals as Guests of Honour at International Book Fairs and the Bibliodiversity of Spanish and Catalan Book Production Abroad: A Critical Analysis from 1991 to 2021 and Good Practices

This subproject combines the findings of all three project research lines in order to analyze, paradigmatically, the impact of Spain and its cities or regions at important international book fairs between 1991 and 2021. One of its goals will thus consist in formulating good practices and successful strategies in the context of literary and cultural marketing as well as in that of nation and city branding which will be potentially applicable beyond the Spanish example, too.

Relying on collected data from archives and interviews, past Spanish presences at international book fairs (Spain in Frankfurt 1991, Spain in Guadalajara 2000, Catalonia in Guadalajara 2004, Catalonia in Frankfurt 2007) will be contrasted with actual Spanish book fair presences (Madrid in Guadalajara 2017, Barcelona in Buenos Aires 2019, Catalonia in London 2020). Surveys and interviews concerning the aims and expectations of Spanish actors on the one hand and the reception of Spanish book fairs activities by the local public on the other will permit general conclusions. Eventually, Spain’s self-representation at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2021 will be evaluated as well, in order to identify positive and negative practices over the past twenty years.

In this context, the evolution of bibliodiversity of Spanish and Catalan book production in German translation between 2007 and 2021 is of special interest. In order to determine the impact of book fairs and Guest of Honour formats on bibliodiversity, data on the quantity and quality of translations from Spanish and Catalan will be assembled and analyzed. At the same time, shifts in political discourses will be discussed, for the Catalan Guest of Honour presence in Frankfurt in 2007, with its excluding patterns and focus on Catalan-writing authors only, seems to have anticipated, in the literary field, separatist discourses in present politics. These oppose official self-representations of Spain that surely will be modified on occasion of Spain’s Guest of Honour status at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2021.

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• Interview with Silvia González and Julià Florit (Institut Ramon Llull) on 12^th October 2017 at Frankfurt Book Fair (Fernando García Naharro).
• Interview with Paco de Blas (curator of "Ganarás la Luz", Madrid exhibition in FIL Guadalajara 2017. City Council of Madrid) on 25^th July 2017 in Madrid (Fernando García Naharro).
• Interview with Belén Llera (Director of Libraries, Archives and Museums of Madrid. City Council of Madrid) on 27^th July 2017 in Madrid (Fernando García Naharro).
• Meeting with Javier Pascual Echalecu (former General Deputy Director of the Book, the Reading and the Spanish Letters) on 12^th April 2017 in Madrid (Fernando García Naharro).
• Interview with Juergen Boos (Director and CEO of Frankfurt Book Fair) on 2^nd July 2018 in Hamburg (Marco Bosshard, Luise Hertwig, Matteo Anastasio and Fernando García Naharro).
• Interview with Simone Bühler (Head of the Guest of Honour programme at the Frankfurt Book Fair) on 4^th July 2018 in Frankfurt (Luise Hertwig, Matteo Anastasio and Fernando García Naharro).
• Interview with Peter Weidhass (Former CEO of Frankfurt Book Fair) on 3^rd July 2018 in Mainz (Luise Hertwig, Matteo Anastasio and Fernando García Naharro).
• Interview with Michi Strausfeld (Editorial Suhrkamp, Editorial Siruela) on 12^th September 2018 in Berlin (Fernando García Naharro).
• Meeting with Oche Califa (CEO Buenos Aires Book Fair) on 12^th October 2018 at Frankfurt Book Fair (Fernando García Naharro and Marco Bosshard).
• Interview with Andres Amorós (curator of the Spanish exhibition in Frankfurt Book Fair 1991) on 20^th December 2018 in Madrid (Fernando García Naharro).
• Interview with Carlos García Gual (curator of the Spanish exhibition in FIL Guadalajara 2000) on 19^th December 2018 in Madrid (Fernando García Naharro).
• Meeting with Izaskun Arretxe (Director of the Literature Area. Institut Ramon Llull) on 13^th December 2018 at Institut Ramon Llull (Barcelona) (Fernando García Naharro).