Under the direction of Carlos Battaglini, the Lanzarote Literature Festival has, in just three editions, gone from being a luminous intuition to becoming a territory: it has managed to unite contemporary literature with the daily life of the island, bring reading closer to those who perhaps did not expect it, and create an event where the reader recognizes himself as part of a community.
In that first edition, back in 2023, the idea of turning the island into a literary island was planted. A shared desire, as simple as it was profound. Marta Sanz, Andrés Neuman, and Benjamin Prado came then. A year later, in 2024, the Festival took its second, more solid step. Paulina Flores, Alberto Olmos, and Marta Jiménez Serrano, among others, visited the island, and they all contributed that unmistakable vibration of something that is beginning to take shape.
And this year, 2025, arrived. Some difficulties and, nevertheless, the Festival reached maturity without losing the freshness of the beginning. It moved south—Tías, Puerto del Carmen, Yaiza—and has brought together leading voices such as Fernando Aramburu, Cristina Fernández Cubas and, soon among others, Sergio del Molino and Mónica Ojeda, reaffirming Carlos Battaglini and the Festival's commitment to closeness and conversation. This year, literature walks among the towns, breathes with the wind, mingles with the murmur of the sea.
Three years, yes, but three years that are a story of transformation: from illusion to commitment. Battaglini has been able to shape a Festival that brings literature closer to the general public and allows it to be traversed by the light and silence of the island. And in the midst of this journey, a presence that deserves to stop the pulse: Cristina Fernández Cubas, the star guest of this third edition, for a talk entitled "The Art of the Story and the Power of the Unsettling in Literature" that we enjoyed yesterday, October 28.
In a time when the short story seemed relegated by the novel, she elevated it to a place of prestige. Her mastery of rhythm, ellipsis, and suggestion makes each story function as a precise mechanism, but at the same time, breathed, with an inner life. She knows where to stop, what to keep silent, and when to let the reader complete the story. Undisputed master of the short story
briefly, Fernández Cubas travels that edge where the everyday opens to the unknown. In her stories, the unsettling is insinuated, like a crack in the wall of the visible. She herself has said that: "every good story holds a mystery, something that is not fully explained and that, for that very reason, accompanies us."
In Lanzarote, the generosity and warmth of Fernández Cubas has dazzled those of us who have had the pleasure of listening to her. It seemed to me that her voice resonated with astonishing naturalness here. And, after all, talking about mystery in literature is talking about the mystery of the island: its contrasts, its beauty that unsettles, its silence that questions. Battaglini knows this too, and that's why she has placed her at the heart of the program. Fernández Cubas reminds us that writing is also listening. That each story, each sentence, holds a crack through which the unexplainable seeps. And that, perhaps, it is in that crack where true literature begins.
Carlos Battaglini and his Lanzarote Literature Festival have achieved something difficult: to bring together high-level contemporary literature with the island community, with free access, with closeness between authors and readers, and with reflection on who we are, what we read, and what we dream. With the support of the City Councils of Tías, Arrecife, and Yaiza, and the Publications Service of the Island Council of Lanzarote, the Festival has established itself as a cultural instrument of real scope, which transcends and projects the word from the island to the world. Therefore, it only remains to congratulate and encourage its director to continue this wonderful project and to thank Cristina Fernández Cubas for opening up the world a little more with her presence and, above all, with that precious legacy that is her stories.
