Andalusian libraries celebrate Library Day with more than twenty activities

Andalusian public libraries are celebrating Library Day, which is commemorated on October 24, with more than twenty activities spread across the different provinces. The programme includes workshops for all audiences, storytelling, stage shows, oral narrations and guided and dramatised tours.

In Almería, the Francisco Villaespesa Library is organising on Tuesday, October 20 a workshop for adults on poetry and piano entitled «Flores de otoño, poesía para el bienestar». On Friday, October 23 it offers a nocturnal evening for children and a stage show about the Generation of 27 that mixes piano, dance and poems by María Zambrano, Federico García Lorca and Luis Cernuda, among others. The Biblioteca Provincial de Cádiz has prepared dramatised tours to make its facilities known, including areas with limited access. The Biblioteca Grupo Cántico de Córdoba hosts exhibitions, such as the one it opens on Monday about the work in the different areas of the centre, and workshops, including one on kite making for the youngest and another that turns participants into cryptographers for a day. There is also a lecture within the Flora festival, oral narration for adults and children's storytelling such as «La aviadora».

The Biblioteca de Granada offers a workshop in which children will create their own typefaces after immersing themselves in picture books. The Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife has organised for October 23 guided tours of its Archive and its Library, where its most outstanding documentary collections and the most representative books can be seen, as well as a theoretical and practical course on basic bookbinding techniques. The assembly hall of the Palacio de Carlos V hosts on October 24 a session of the reading club about the book «Hasta que empieza a brillar», by Andrés Neuman. In Jaén, the library offers a children's workshop to make decorated boxes on the 22nd and a creative writing one for adults on October 24. The Museo de Jaén has prepared for October 24 the family oral narration «Guardianes de historias». In Sevilla, the Biblioteca Infanta Elena offers on October 23 the oral narration show for adults «In Vino Veritas?», with stories from oral tradition and universal literature in which wine is the protagonist.

Library Day is celebrated every October 24 on the initiative of the Asociación Española de Amigos del Libro Infantil y Juvenil, which established it in 1997 in memory of the destruction of the Sarajevo Library in 1992. This year's motto is «Sin profesionales, no hay bibliotecas», with which it seeks to highlight the role of the staff of these spaces. The Regional Minister of Culture, Historical Heritage and Sport, Patricia del Pozo, has highlighted «the work carried out by the professionals of Andalusian libraries, guarantors of citizens' access to culture». According to data from the Barómetro de hábitos de lectura y compra de libros en España cited by the Consejería, Andalucía is one of the communities in which the reading rate has grown the most in the last seven years. Attendance at cultural activities in these spaces has risen 18.4% so far this year, according to the Unidad Estadística y Cartográfica.