Reading is no longer enough: literature in the age of experience

ManacorWhen someone thinks about going to a literary festival, they don't imagine they could leave with a tattooed arm or shoulder. The unknown in the equation is isolated when you add FLEM to Magaluf: the Magaluf Expanded Literature Festival, a festival that long ago stopped considering literature as an isolated discipline and has exposed it to coexistence with electronics, urban art, tattoos, podcasts, games, and even karaoke.

While the two major literary events in Mallorca – the Formentor Conversations and the Magaluf Expanded Literature Festival – are sponsored by hotel companies, there is a great conceptual distance between both. The former could be included in the category of a classic contest, with authors with a consolidated body of work and a marked intellectual dimension, in dialogue with the great debates of their time. But FLEM arrived in 2021 to turn everything upside down.

“One of the things I find coolest is the faces of the audience, who are not accustomed to a festival being fun,” explains FLEM director Miquel Ferrer. He considers that a literature festival “does not have to be academic or institutional” and that his proposal “goes hand in hand with the socialization of reading. We want to go out into the open air and celebrate this act of reading.”

And where FLEM has wanted to dust off the books is, nothing more and nothing less, at the epicenter of the quintessential tourist destination for the British: Magaluf. Can one talk about literature in a hotel with a wave pool, from where one can see one of the beaches that is the setting for the most notorious alcoholic excesses of tourist Mallorca? For Ferrer and his Rata Corner team, without a doubt.

For four days (this year, from October 1st to 4th), literature coexists with concerts, podcasts, DJ sessions, artistic interventions, and a techno-recital dedicated to Biel Mesquida. The dilemma is whether this expansion could end up diluting books within an offer closer to an entertainment festival than a literary festival. Writer Sebastià Portell has participated in several editions of FLEM and believes that the combination of literature with music, art, podcasts, and spectacle can be ambivalent, and help reach new readers, but also end up relegating books to just one more element of the experience. “Both things can happen. It may happen that someone arrives without being very clear that FLEM is a literary festival and only comes for the atmosphere or for a concert. But it is also true that we are optimistic by nature and perhaps this same person, after the music session, will end up browsing at a book stall or will end up being interested in some author.” “Everything adds up” and it is in the complementarity that FLEM offers compared to other more “serious” proposals that he finds its virtue. “If in Mallorca there were only one proposal for a literary festival or event and it were this one, we would be falling short and it would mean that our cultural system is not in good health,” he points out. “We need everything, and we cannot remain only in the dynamic of seminars,” he adds.

In this expansion of letters towards other artistic disciplines that bring FLEM closer to a product designed to offer an experience, one of the great protagonists is Rodrigo Cuevas, National Award for Current Music. Maria Hein was in charge of providing music for the opening ceremony.

Perhaps the most orthodox would not approach the Literary Karaoke or the Murdoku Tournament, a competition of wit, in which participants must solve crimes. Among these more playful proposals, Quadernit also returns, the quiz from the creators of the Summer workbook for adults from Blackie Books.

Podcasts are also reclaiming their own space, as another element for presenting literature to new formats of cultural consumption. Among the proposals: Club Tàndem, by Juliana Canet and Marina Porras, which dedicates a special edition to 39 degrees in the shade, by Antònia Vicens. It is also recorded live Lots of Text and Guarida y Estera.

And in the midst of all this bustle, some rooms of the Magaluf hotel hosting the festival are once again transformed into temporary art installations and “experiences”. Boa Mistura, Lyona, Tamara K. Lloyd Cox and Belén Segarra. Another triple somersault within the program is the Flash Day Tattoo, an event where Nil Marqués does quick tattoos for the public. Bel Fullana, Albert Pinya and Laia Ventayol create ephemeral art in dialogue with the work of Joan Miró.

The director of the FLEM, Miquel Ferrer, maintains that “artistic quality is paramount, and this can be seen in the lineup, not only of the writers, but of all the participants”.

A global poster with an island accent

Throughout its six editions, FLEM has been progressively internationalizing, and especially since 2024, there has also been an increase in the presence of authors linked to the Islands. While it began in 2021 with sixteen authors, of whom only one was international, the bulk were national—thirteen—and two local, it has reached this year's edition with thirty-two authors: six international, nineteen national, and seven local.

Another hallmark of FLEM is not to categorize or organize events based on the origin of the authors. Thus, the program combines meetings, conversations, and book signings featuring literature from around the world, from the Spanish state, and in the Catalan language. David Foenkinos, Anna Todd, Anna Hope, Aria Aber, Ben Brooks, and Lara Pawson are the international attractions, combined in conversations or interviews with Juliana Canet, Aina Fullana, and Marta Terrassa. “The growth has been very natural and very gradual,” explains Ferrer.

In this commitment to reinforce the presence of local authors and literature in Catalan, this year includes Gabriel Janer Manila, Biel Mesquida, Aina Fullana, Laura Gost, Olívia Lund, Joan Miquel Oliver, and Jaume Oliver. One of the central acts is the Technohomage to Biel Mesquida, recent winner of the Honorary Award for Catalan Letters.

For Sebastià Portell, “FLEM strikes a balance because it has a vision focused on the local, but also on other literatures, and I see it as a gesture of generosity.”

The weight of creation in Catalan

The great novelty of the sixth edition is the FLEM-Magaluf Novel Award, endowed with 10,000 euros, publication with Reservoir Books, and a national tour. The first call, limited to works in Spanish, has received more than 170 manuscripts. “The presence of authors in Catalan has been progressively normalizing, although I would like it to reach 50%, which is what we find in other cultural contexts” of non-minorized languages, explains Portell.

Also, for the first year, two authors have been able to carry out a literary residency there: Mar Picó and Amani Saeed. Completing this commitment is FLEM PRO, the professional day that brings together authors, editors, booksellers, and cultural agents. “It has provided me with a very necessary and valuable time to advance the project. Obviously, a novel is a long project and cannot be finished in ten days, but the residency has offered me a space for rest, inspiration, and concentration, without having to dedicate time to other things,” states Picó. Portell celebrates that the residency was open to authors in English and Catalan, “but in the award, we authors in Catalan have not been able to participate, and I believe we have enough voices and diversity to do so,” she claims. Ferrer maintains that the festival “communicates in Catalan and we have always given a voice to our language.” Likewise, he takes the opportunity to make “a call” to publishers who might be interested in sponsoring the FLEM award in Catalan in future editions. “We shall see, if we can weave these alliances.”