IE University, academic partner of Hay Festival Segovia from September 26 to 29

• The Festival announced that tickets for a third of the program events of the upcoming edition are available as from today on its website at  www.hayfestival.com/segovia.
• IE University will serve as key sponsor and academic partner of the Festival for the fifth consecutive year.
• This year’s Hay Festival Segovia will feature big names like Mario Vargas Llosa, José Caballero Bonald, Rosa Montero, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Lorenzo Silva, Pritzker Prizewinner Wang Shu, and French author David Foenkinos.

The organizers of Hay Festival Segovia announced today that tickets for a third of program events  for the upcoming edition set to take place in the Castilian city of Segovia from September 26 to 29 2013, are on sale as from today. Big names at this year’s Festival include winner of the Noble Prize for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Cervantes Prize, José Caballero Bonald, the recently announced winner of this year’s Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts, Antonio Muñoz Molina, and Lorenzo Silva, winner of the Planeta Prize. The Festival also announced the attendance of further guest speakers, Piedad Bonet, Daniela Krien, Luis García Montero, Nativel Preciado,  Rosa Montero, David Foenkinos, Val McDermid and Lukas Bärfuss.

One of the key features announced is the debate on the protection of heritage in war zones, which will form part of the conversation on “Blue Shield, the Red Cross of Cultural Heritage”. The conversation will be led by the Archduke and Imperial Prince of Austria, Karl von Habsburg Lorena, President of the International Committee of Blue Shield, together with journalist and associate director of Spanish daily ABC, Ramón Perez-Maura,  and is organized jointly by ABC and IE University.

“The festival is a place to dream in public. It provides a rigorous analysis of truths and possibilities. In short, it is a celebration of the power of words”, says María Sheila Cremaschi, Director of Hay Festival Segovia. “We want to make it easier for fans of the festival who live in other parts of Spain or abroad, and who therefore need time to organize themselves to be able to join us. The fifteen events for which tickets are already available make up a third of the program, and each and every one of them are worth travelling to Segovia for.”

China will shine in Hay Festival Segovia 

Hay Festival Segovia 2013 will be celebrating forty years of relations between Spain and China with a series of acts and conversations sponsored by the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Spain, CAEG (China Arts and Entertainment Group), and IE University. It will also be the first time that the exhibition on “100 Contemporary Projects of Chinese Architecture” is seen in Spain. The exhibition will be opened during the Festival will be open to the public in Segovia’s Quintanar Palace until the end of November.

The exhibition’s curator Fang Zhenning, who was the curator of the Chinese Pavilion in the last Venice Biennale and at the Shanghai Expo, will talk about China’s new architecture with Javier Quintana, architect and Dean of IE School of Architecture & Design. Martha Thorne, Vice Dean of the School of Architecture and Executive Director of the Pritzker Prizes, will talk with Chinese architect Wang Shu, winner of the Pritzker prize in 2012.