The Guadalajara International Book Fair is the world’s largest event in this sector after Frankfurt, and the largest in the Spanish-speaking publishing world. Barcelona will be the guest city at the fair in 2025. The FIL has invited a different city or country to play a key role in all areas of the fair in each edition since 1993. The City Council has confirmed the name of the commissioner who will head the process to create projects that represent the Barcelona and demonstrate its role in the publishing industry: the journalist Anna Guitart.

Guitart will be tasked with building and creating the ambience for the Barcelona hall at the fair; coordinating and funding a delegation of authors to include as many literary categories and genres as possible; ensuring that publishers, translators and agents are all represented; boosting the sector of illustration, design and new formats, and coordinating with the University of Guadalajara on a programme to engage more closely with the local academic and university world.

The commissioner’s team and the promotor group will also have to guarantee the dissemination of scientific heritage; create a programme of activities and visual and performing arts displays that includes options specifically for spectators between the ages of 3 and 12; design a gastronomy festival and offer projects that demonstrate Barcelona’s cinematic wealth.

Born in Barcelona in 1976, Anna Guitart is a leading name in in literary journalism in Catalonia. She is a collaborator with the TV3 programme Tot es mou, as well as El matí de Catalunya Ràdio and with the newspaper Ara, and is an editorial advisor for the magazine El món d’ahir. She also has her own space on Canal 33, a programme she directs and presents called Tot el temps del món.