The second edition of this festival, which will be inaugurated tomorrow, Tuesday, until Saturday 14th September in the La Palma municipality of Los Llanos de Aridane and which will be attended by the Nobel Laureates in Literature Mario Vargas Llosa and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, will again have a day dedicated to astronomy. Those present at the meeting will visit the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory and after a panel discussion in honour of the founding Director of the IACV Francisco Sánchez, will make an observation with night-time amateur telescopes.
For the second consecutive year the La Palma municipality of Los Llanos de Aridane will be the meeting point for some 60 great contributors to Literature in Spanish. From 10th to 14th September 2019 the Hispano-American Festival of Authors will be celebrated in La Palma, organized by the writer from La Palma Nicolàs Melini, and in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) will collaborate, just as it did for the first edition.
Among the many activities on the programme that of Wednesday 11th has a clear astronomical theme, which the organizers consider to be necessary becasue this literary meeting is in the island of the stars, where there is one fo the best astronomical observatories in the world. In the morning those attending the Festival will go up to the Roque de los Muchachos observatory and will get to know some of the large telescopes which deepen our knowledge of the cosmos from this peak on La Palma, such as the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), and the telescopes MAGIC and LST-1.
On the same afternoon, at 19.30 hr the Benahorarita Archaeological Museum in Los Llanos de Aridane will be the scene of a tribute to Francisco Sánchez Martínez, the Founding Director of the IAC, who gave the impulse to the Canary Island Observatories, and wrote the book “Dreaming of the Stars. This is how Astrophysics in Spain was born” recently published by the IAC. In the meeting hall of the Museum there will be a panel discussion with the title “The Inspiring Force of the Universe” with participation by Rafael Rebolo López, the current Director of the IAC, Caisana Muñoz-Tuñón, astrophysicist and Deputy Director of the IAC, and the writers Karla Suarez and Alberto Ruy-Sánchez. This panel discussion will be moderated by Carmen del Puerto Varela, journalist and head of the Unit of Communication and Scientific Culture of the IAC.
To end the day the participants in the Festival will make an astronomical observation with amateur telescopes at the Centre of Interpretation of Volcanic Caves “Caños de Fuego”.
The collaboration of the IAC in this festival follows the line of other initiatives of this research centre, such as the multidisciplinary project “In a certain place in the Universe.” This literary adventure, which started in 2016 to celebrate the IV centenary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes will give rise to the coming publication of a book of short stories inspired by astronomy, and with a charitable purpose, in which some of the writers present this week in Los Llanos de Aridane have participated.
The Hispano-american Festival of Authors is an international event promoted by the Vargas Llosa Chair, the City Council of Los Llanos de Aridane, and the Island Parliament of La Palma, with the collaboration of other institutions such as the Cervantes Institute, the University of Guadalajara Foundation, and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. Its objective is to promote the development of culture in Spanish via Literature, one of its principal virtues.
More information:
The Hispano-american Festival of Authors: https://hispanoamericanodeescritores.com
Notas de prensa de la anterior edición (ESP):
El IAC colabora con el primer Festival Hispanoamericano de Escritores en La Palma
Estrellas de la literatura ‘tocan el cielo’ en el Observatorio de La Palma
