The Diplomat
Spain is the Guest of Honor at the Kolkata (Calcutta) Book Fair, the third largest and the first in terms of number of visitors in the world, which began yesterday with the inauguration of the program of activities of the Instituto Cervantes.
Spain’s representation will once again have the slogan Creatividad Desbordante (Overflowing Creativity), the same slogan it had at the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Ljubljana Book Fair in 2022. This is the second time that Spain has been invited to the Kolkata Book Fair. The first was in 2006. Apart from that, the graphic image of Spain at the Fair features the same design as the Frankfurt or Ljubljana fairs, in order to “improve the visibility and identification of the Spanish book at international fairs,” as indicated by the Ministry of Culture.
“Spain is very honored to be a guest country at the Kolkata Book Fair,” said the Spanish ambassador to India, José María Ridao, during a press conference in Kolkata last December on the occasion of the election of Spain as the Focal theme country of the 46th Kolkata Book Fair, which began yesterday and will conclude on February 12.
“We come with the desire not only to make our authors known but also to foster a deep exchange with Indian culture, for which we feel great admiration and respect,” added Ridao. “Spain arrives in Kolkata just a few months after Frankfurt, which is proof of the growing importance of this Fair and the cultural influence of Spain in the world,” said the secretary general of the Fair, Tribid Chatterjee.
On the other hand, the Instituto Cervantes presented yesterday at the main pavilion of the Fair its program of cultural and academic activities in Kolkata, which includes conferences, poetry readings and book presentations and whose protagonists will be both Indian Hispanists and Spanish writers. Present at the event were the director of Cervantes, Luis García Montero; the director of Cervantes New Delhi, Óscar Pujol; the ambassador José María Ridao and the general director of Books and Reading Promotion of the Ministry of Culture, María José Gálvez.
The Kolkata International Book Fair was inaugurated in 1976. Organized by the Publishers and Booksellers Guild of Kolkata, it is the most important in Asia and, according to some rankings, the third in the world, after Frankfurt and London. Since 1991, it has been organized every year around a central theme and Spain is the Focal theme country for the 2023 edition. Aimed primarily at the general public, the Kolkata Book Fair is also attended by professionals from the sector and is the most visited in the world. The 2022 edition welcomed more than 18 million visitors, according to data from Acción Cultural Española (AC/E, the public entity dedicated to fostering and promoting Spain’s culture and heritage).
India is the world’s third-largest book market, with turnover set to reach 12,099 million euros in 2024-25, according to the India Book Market Report 2022. With the world’s largest population between the ages of five and 24, 500 million people, and the largest school-going population, 265 million, educational publishing accounts for more than 95% of the publishing industry and generates a significant volume of employment. It is also one of the fastest growing industries in India, with more than 24,000 publishing houses. On the other hand, Spanish is one of the languages offered in secondary education in India, where there is a high demand for Spanish classes, as reflected in the figures of the Instituto Cervantes in New Delhi, which is currently the center with the highest volume of teaching activity, with almost 300,000 hours per student and more than 6,000 enrollments in the 2021/2022 academic year.
