Gijón has been celebrating La Semana Negra since 1988, a literary festival that has become a meeting point for authors, works and readers of the Negro genre, turning the ten days of the event into an improvised, generous and fresh appointment in which other genres such as science fiction or fantasy novels.
Yesterday began in the Asturian city the latest edition of La Semana Negra, the largest open-air literary festival in Europe.
Black letters in the Cantabrian Sea
Tomorrow the black week begins in Gijón, you cannot miss it. pic.twitter.com/EQeweLav6T
- Remedies (@remediosgurdiel) July 7, 2016
As is the custom every July, the famous "Black Train" left yesterday from the Chamartín station in Madrid, with several writers on board, heading for Gijón, a city that in 2016 will once again host the latest edition of its La Semana Negra literary festival, which will run for the next ten days.
After being received by the music group El Ventolín, the writers went to an old shipyard in the Asturian city where the stalls of books, programs and snacks were deployed in order to warm up this appointment to which more than 170 crime novel writers will attend (and not so black). The result of such a large capacity is translated into a program that, despite its workshops, presentations and meetings, is always subject to changes and surprises, which makes this festival an even closer and more stimulating event.
Leonardo Padura, one of the gold attendees of La Semana Negra 2016.
Among the highlights of the program there is no shortage of editorial presentations, recitals of "dirty poetry" under the night tents or typical concerts to liven up the evening. In turn, the attendance of heavyweights of the genre such as Leonardo Padura, 2015 Prince of Asturias Award winner and father of the Cuban detective novel (or dirty realism), the presence of the Swedes Jerker Erikson and Hakar Axlander Sundquist, who under the pseudonym Erik Axl Sund have published the trilogy The Eyes of Virginia, already baptized as the successor of Men who did not love women, by Stieg Larsson, or the Italian Mirko Zilahy, whose first novel Así se mata, published by Alfaguara, aims to become one of the competition's surprises.
An appointment in which the passion for the black genre and others such as science fiction or fantasy is revived, where fabada dishes rest on the round tables and the Cantabrian breeze sponsors what is one of the reference literary festivals of our country and Europe.
Would you like to attend Gijón's Black Week?