The Publications Service of the Insular Library of Lanzarote will celebrate the Day of the Canary Islands Literature on February 21st. Specifically, it has announced the installation of a book sales stand, in which bookstores and publishers from the island will participate.
In this event, the project When the shop window writes, will also be inaugurated, which consists of decorating the shop windows of the island's businesses with fragments of texts from Canarian literature.
The stall will be in the Plaza de la Constitución, in Arrecife, from 10:00 to 14:00 hours, a period during which books about the Canary Islands and by Canary Islands authors mainly can be purchased, since the objective of this initiative is to promote and encourage the sale of Canary Islands literature, bringing it closer to the citizens in an open and accessible space.
This year, the designated author for the Day of the Canary Islands Literature is Alfonso García Ramos, a writer and journalist belonging to the generation of Canary Islands novelists who began publishing around the seventies. He graduated in Law from the Central University of Madrid and obtained a diploma in Journalism from the Official School of Journalism. After returning to the Canary Islands in 1959, he joined the afternoon newspaper La Tarde, to which he remained linked for a large part of his professional career.
On the other hand, the project When the shop window writes will begin with the inauguration of the finished shop windows and the on-site decoration of one of the shops in the Plaza de la Constitución adjacent to the stand, so that citizens can observe the creative process. This initiative will be developed in shops and institutions throughout the island over a year, until the celebration of the next Canary Islands Literature Day, turning commercial spaces into meeting points between literature and everyday life.
The counselor responsible for the Publications Service of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, Ascensión Toledo, has highlighted that "Canary Islands Literature Day is an opportunity to claim the literary talent of our islands and bring it closer to the citizens in a close, participatory, and visible way in public spaces".
Toledo also stressed that “with the installation of the stand in the Plaza de la Constitución and the launch of the project When the shop window writes we want to take literature to the street, involve the commercial and cultural fabric of Lanzarote and generate a direct link between authors, bookstores and readers”.
The councilor added that “the figure of Alfonso García Ramos, protagonist of this edition, represents a fundamental stage of contemporary Canarian narrative, and it is our duty to keep his memory alive and disseminate his work among new generations”.
Likewise, in the context of the commemorative events for the Day of the Canary Islands Literature, the Insular Library has organized a literary evening by Alicia Llarena and María Ángeles Pérez López, which will take place in the auditorium of the Insular Library on February 26 at 6:00 PM.
From the Cabildo, citizens are encouraged to participate in the different scheduled activities and to join this collective celebration of Canarian literature and cultural identity.