On Monday 16th October, the Can Sales Public Library of Palma is organising a collective reading on the occasion of Women Writers’ Day. This year, the celebration reaches its eighth edition under the slogan “The pleasure, joy and laughter of women”. It is a commemoration promoted by the National Library of Spain (BNE), together with the Spanish Federation of Women Managers, Executives, Professionals and Entrepreneurs (FEDEPE), and Clásicas y Modernas, Association for the Equality of Women and Men in Culture, since 2016.

Each year this celebration takes place on the Monday closest to the feast of Saint Teresa of Jesus (15 October) and the aim is to vindicate the work and legacy of women writers throughout history with the reading of representative fragments of their works. For each edition, a curator is appointed to select the theme from which a selection of texts by Spanish and Latin American women writers of cultural and social prestige is made. The curator of this eighth edition is the writer Marta Sanz.

As every year, the auditorium of the BNE leads the reading of fragments by women writers, and in the Balearic Islands the Can Sales Public Library – as a library of the State Public Library Network – will take part for the eighth consecutive year.

Reading of fragments

The event, aimed at the general public, will consist of the reading of short fragments of texts written by female authors that talk about pleasure, joy, feelings, love and heartbreak. It will take place from 18:30 to 20:00 and is a free event that will also be broadcast live on the library’s Instagram channel (@bibliotecacansales). Texts by women who have played a key role in understanding our contemporary history will be read and interpreted. The more than twenty texts selected by the curator cover pleasure versus the enjoyment of nature, travel, food, knowledge; the pleasure of eroticism without guilt, of reading and writing; the sharp smile of satire and the sense of humour as a table of salvation in the worst of times…

We will hear the words of writers as indispensable as Emilia Pardo-Bazán, Montserrat Roig and Almudena Grandes, but also as necessary as Alfonsina Storni, Carmen Martín Gaite, Mercedes Valdivieso, Luz Pozo and Maria Mercè Marçal.

In addition, on Wednesday 18 October there will be two activities for the little ones, firstly the storytelling “La reina dels embulls” by the company Viatge al món de n’Aina, for children aged 4 and over, followed by a story-writing workshop for children aged 8 and over.