This year, Hay Festival Segovia brings together more than 100 experts from 17 countries, focusing on innovation and tradition

More than 100 guests from 17 countries will attend this year’s Hay Festival Segovia, Spain’s largest literature and thought event, turning Segovia into the world capital of debate and ideas between September 15 and September 18, 2002.

IE University is once again partnering with the Hay Festival Segovia, which this year will focus on Tradition and Innovation. Through the support of the IE Foundation, the Segovia campus is one of the main venues for this cultural event, winner of the 2020 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and the Humanities. The Hay Festival Segovia 2022 program is divided into four main thematic blocks: Architecture and Art, European Dialogues, Fiction and Non-Fiction Literature, Latin American Dialogues and Youth.

The seventeenth edition will bring together leading names in literature (Inés Martín Rodrigo, Manon Uphoff, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Carme Riera, Nicola Lagiogia, Carmen Mola, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Espido Freire or Reyes Monforte), leadership (Pablo Isla, Santiago Iñiguez or John Simenon), technology (Nerea Luis Mingueza, Mónica Rikic or Liam Young), nature (Gemma Knowles or Josef H. Reichhof), poetry (Orlando Mondragón or Antonio Lucas), architecture (Sou Fujimoto or Juan Herreros), visual arts (Joana Vasconcelos), cinema (Rodrigo Cortés, Leonor Watling, Carles Francino), philosophy (Emilio Lledó or José Luis Pardo), history (Antony Beevor and Simon Sebag Montefiore) and politics.

IE University as the venue for Hay Festival Segovia

The opening of the festival will take place on September 15 in the impressive Aula Magna of IE University, an event organized by Hay Festival with Fundación IE, Fundación Telefónica, Fundación Sabadell, the UK Embassy and the Portuguese Embassy.

Hay Festival Segovia offers an unparalleled opportunity to see and hear in person the most outstanding international figures in their respective disciplines. IE University experts will share their knowledge in fields such as innovation, humanities and entrepreneurship. Among others, the festival will feature the former CEO of Inditex and current president of IE University's International Board of Trustees, Pablo Isla, who will talk with film director Rodrigo Cortés. Internationally recognized as an outstanding entrepreneur, his vision of culture and the humanities as essential elements that drive talent and influence leadership is less well known.

Japanese architect and professor Sou Fujimoto and architect Juan Herreros will discuss the future of architecture with IE University's Dean of Architecture and Design, Marta Thorne. The British-Russian Nobel laureate, acclaimed for his discovery of graphene, will also lead a debate with Diego del Alcázar Benjumea, CEO of IE University, on the role of the scientist in turbulent times, reflecting on the geopolitics of technologies against nationalist obsession.

For his part, Santiago Íñiguez, president of IE University, will moderate a debate on meritocracy and elitism and their impact on the history and future of our societies with historian and journalist Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, Hana Jalloul, member of the Madrid Assembly, Bloomberg columnist Adrian Wooldridge and Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper. IE Business School Dean Lee Newman and emotions expert Richard Firth-Godbhere will discuss the role emotions play in society and evolution. Joining them will be Financial Times editor Jonathan Moules.

Also, evolutionary biologist Josef H. Reichhof will talk about biodiversity with IE University's Global Director of Sustainability, Isabela del Alcázar. Among the projects sponsored by the university's sustainability office is the Nurture Hub, a student-created structure that provides a space for relaxation, enhances biodiversity, raises awareness and attracts native pollinators such as butterflies to campus. The El Romeral de San Marcos garden will once again be the setting for a poetry and literature recital coordinated by José Félix Valdivieso.

About Hay Festival Segovia

The Hay Festival was born in 1988 in a small town in Wales, Hay-on-Wye, bringing together international personalities from the world of literature or music as a meeting point for debate and thought. In 2020 it was recognized with the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities.

The first Hay Festival Segovia was held in 2006, bringing together some of the best writers and thinkers in the world and has continued to be held every year in September. It offers a broad cultural program with a strong presence, also, of architecture and visual arts.

This festival inspires, explores and entertains, while inviting its participants to imagine the world as it really is and how it could be. In 2022, the main theme of Hay Festival Segovia is Tradition and Innovation. It is held, in person, in different locations in the city.

Since its inception, the Segovia edition of the festival has been directed by María Sheila Cremaschi, a historian and Master in Management and Cultural Policies. In her native Buenos Aires she began her cultural activism by creating a theater. Once in Madrid she founded, together with Beltrán Gambier, the magazine Intramuros in 1994. Cremaschi has received several international distinctions, among them, in 1988, a distinction from the city of Buenos Aires for Young Talents; the Media Impact Award from the International Press Club of Madrid (in 2008); five years later she was named member of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty the Queen, Elizabeth II. In 2015, King Felipe VI, awarded her the Cross of Isabella the Catholic. And, in 2020, the Hay Festival (from Wales -UK-, Latin America and Spain), received the Princess of Asturias Award in Communication and Humanities, jointly with the Guadalajara Fair (Mexico).

Tickets for the different events of Hay Festival Segovia 2022 are available here.