Shall we get together to read? Reading parties are coming to Spain this summer.

Claudia Guillén had long wanted to finish Our Share of Night, Mariana Enríquez's novel that won the Herralde Prize in 2019. She made progress slowly, squeezing through public transport and downtime. “The problem is that I don't have as much free time as I'd like,” she confessed to La Vanguardia . So when a friend told her that several people were signing up for a Sunday silent reading at the Maremagnum shopping center in Barcelona, ​​she decided to join in. “They didn't know each other at all. It seemed like a very original plan. I'm a reader and I'd never heard of anything like that.”

This isn't a book club, nor is it mandatory to discuss anything afterward, although it is a great opportunity to socialize and meet other book lovers. The gathering, dubbed the Reading Festival, was organized by Planeta publishing house after the success of a previous event at the Madrid Railway Museum.

“We wanted to do something small but effective. Something that could be controlled, but at the same time, something that would bring together many people with a common passion: reading. The idea is to repeat this same initiative in different cities across Spain with the aim of decentralizing culture,” explains Planeta de Libros.

Among the readers in attendance were several writers who, after the reading hour, shared their impressions with their tablemates about the chapters they'd had time to read. These included journalist Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, winner of the recent Fernando Lara Prize; Care Santos, winner of the 2017 Nadal Prize; Rosa Ribas, who attended the celebration with some friends from Germany "who wouldn't rule out doing something similar there"; and Juan Trejo, who acknowledged that "dedicating time to reading today is nothing less than an intimate act of insurrection against the acceleration and unconsciousness in which we live immersed."

Neither of them had ever attended what the internet has dubbed a reading party before, but they have no doubt they'll be back. They'll have the opportunity to do so, as more and more initiatives, both spontaneous and organized, are emerging in different parts of Spain and inspired by those originating in New York.

“Reading parties have started to spread thanks to social media,” says Violeta Dávila.

“In the United States, they've grown in popularity after the pandemic and have begun to spread to other countries thanks to social media, where the idea seems to have become a real hit, as videos showing strangers getting together to read are becoming more and more common,” explains Violeta Dávila, head of the Leer Juntos festival, a reading-focused event held in Madrid last February and which organized one of the first reading parties in the country.

“It made perfect sense to do it because our event is dedicated to reading, and what better way to celebrate it? There are a thousand valid ways to organize something like this. In our case, we limited the capacity and asked people to bring a book to read and another to exchange. The latter could be secondhand. What we did ask was that it be a copy they would recommend and that it be special for some reason.”

Book fairs are also a great time to hold this type of activity, as Zaragoza demonstrated the first weekend of June. Among other things, because authors can join together once they've finished signing at their respective booths.

Similarly, it's becoming increasingly common to organize reading parties before a book launch. This is especially common in the field of young adult literature. One example was the one held to celebrate the publication of the latest installment in Lauren Roberts' Powerless series. After the silent reading, the audiobook narrators read a few chapters, proving that there's no one-size-fits-all way to celebrate a love of books.

Solidarity is also often present at these events. Shortly before the San Juan festival, Bilbao held its first charity reading party . While these gatherings are usually free, this time there was an admission fee, and the money was donated to the Goazenup association, which promotes human and environmental well-being.

Novelist Mikel Santiago hosted the event: “I was really curious to learn more about this initiative, and I must say I loved it. It was like going to a yoga class with a group of people. The social aspect of reading at the same time with so many people helps you go deeper and sit still, without being in a hurry to do anything else. You set limits because you set a goal to dedicate that hour to reading—that is, to yourself. Distracting yourself with your phone is a non-negotiable option. It has that prophylactic effect from the outside.”

"Reading with a lot of people helps you sit still, without being in a hurry to do anything else," says Mikel Santiago.

The Calders bookstore in Barcelona has also begun organizing these gatherings every Wednesday and Friday in July, although its bookseller, Isabel Sucunza, explains that, in this case, the idea didn't come from across the Atlantic, but from her own experience. "Many years ago, I worked on a TV3 program called L'hora del lector (Reader's Hour ), and my colleagues and I always joked that one day we'd air an episode in which we'd all be reading and not say anything. Obviously, that was television, and they wouldn't have allowed it, but it made perfect sense. This thought stuck in my head, and with the arrival of summer, we thought it was the perfect time."

It's not just the publishing industry that welcomes reading festivals, which tend to be intergenerational. Psychologists and sociologists also find these gatherings interesting. As Sucunza says, "In these times, any screen-free space is welcome."

From a New York rooftop to the entire world

It was a group of friends—Ben Bradbury, Charlotte Jackson, John Lifrieri, and Tom Worcester—who popularized the concept of reading parties on a large scale in 2023, “very basic but unusual gatherings,” as they themselves acknowledged to La Vanguardia . “It all started on a rooftop in New York. The intention was to find more time to read in a busy city. It quickly became a space for people to feel a sense of belonging.” Their proposal was to read for 30 minutes with relaxing music in the background, followed by a short break to exchange readings with a friend, and then another 30 minutes. They began sharing these gatherings on social media, using the username Reading Rhythms, and the videos were shared all over the world, leading them to organize new events in other cities, such as London, Los Angeles, and Milan. Now, almost two years later, these literary parties seem to have caught on with readers in different countries, to the point that they are the ones organizing their own.