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La directora de la Feria del Libro de Madrid, Eva Orúe, durante su conferencia en el CNIO. / Laura M. Lombardía. CNIO
Eva Orúe, the first woman to become Director of the Madrid Book Fair in 80 years, delivered a talk today at the premises of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO)
Orúe’s lecture was part of the seminar programme organised by the CNIO’s Women in Science Office (WISE), which has gone back to its on-site mode.
“If you like what you have chosen and you think you are good at it, just carry on”. This was the advice for young people taking their first professional steps given by Eva Orúe, Director the Madrid Book Fair. “We are often faced with decisions we had not thought to make. We women go about things differently – not better not worse –, and when we enter a world that is male-dominated, we have to adapt ourselves to other circumstances. The smartest approach is to take the best of both worlds. The gender perspective should not exclude anyone; it is all for the inclusion of new points of view. My point of view is necessarily different from that of my predecessor, as my life experience is different. My advice is, just do not let other people force their points of view on you”.
Eva Orúe is the first woman to have become Director of the Madrid Book Fair in this major event’s 80-year history. Today, she delivered a talk at the premises of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) under the title, Madrid Book Fair: The Apocalyptic and the Integrated Meet in El Retiro, organised by the CNIO’s Women in Science (WISE) Office.
Born in Zaragoza in 1962, Orúe has a long career in journalism, working in news and general interest shows in radio and television, and writing press articles. “In my days as a press correspondent”, she recalls, “all the women were single, while men could travel with their families. There was a clear difference there”.
Orúe has been a correspondent in the United Kingdom, France and Russia, and a columnist in many different radio stations.
Before she was appointed Director of the Madrid Book Fair in January 2022, she was one of the managers of Ingenio de Divertinajes, a communications and content agency working with authors, publishers and bookshops, as well as with organisations and NGOs.
A face for the Book Fair
“The Madrid Book Fair had had a strong image as a cultural event for a long time already. But it needed a face”, Orúe explains. “If we know who the editors of our newspapers are, we should know who runs the Book Fair too. It should be someone we hear when something happens related to books and literature, someone who reaches out to authors and is surrounded by books every day. We wanted to have a welcoming, joyful fair, an event that is capable of reinventing itself and being part of networks gathering other institutions in the city”, she adds.
In her talk at the CNIO, Orúe revealed that the appointment came unexpectedly. A friend encouraged her to apply for the job and did it to learn in the process, but she did not count on winning. Also unexpected was the impact that the fact that she was the first woman to become director had.
“Reading is joy”, Orúe claims. Her message is consistent with the type of fair she wants: “We want a fair that celebrates diversity, that draws not only book lovers but people who do not usually come as well.” Especially immigrants and teenagers. “This is quite a challenge. In the past, the fair targeted children, but never 14- to 18-year-olds. We want to reach them in schools, organising activities for them”.
As to the title she chose for her talk at the CNIO – a reference to Umberto Eco’s book on mass culture Apocalypse Postponed (Apocalípticos e integrados in Spanish) –, Eva says she prefers the “integrated” approach: “I think the Book Fair should welcome authors who are YouTubers or Instagrammers. There is many a door to enter the world of books, and influencers could be one of those doors”.
Reviewing the evolution of the Spanish book market, Orúe mentioned one of the greatest mysteries of the sector: Spaniards do not read (35.6 percent of the population never read a book) but we publish a lot (7000 books a year, albeit with low numbers of copies: 3590 on average). On the bright side, she said the latest edition of the Book Fair had been very successful in terms of turnout: “It drew 3.1 million visitors”.
Orúe, who praised local bookshops for their “social function in the neighbourhoods”, is the author of several books, including Rusia en la encrucijada, Historias de miopes, Locas por el fútbol: de las gradas al vestuario and Padres e hijos: La herencia del éxito, with Sara Gutiérrez; and La segunda oportunidad: Los triunfadores que supieron aprender de sus fracasos.
“Young readers like paper books; it is quite a different sensory experience”
According to Orúe, the digital era has not killed the ability to read in young people. “Youths like to read, and paper books deliver quite a different sensory experience. I think it has to do with the genres they choose – comics, manga and so on –, where e-books are not as good as books in print. You can read them, but it is not quite the same”.
“Moreover, if you attend a book signing event in a book fair or a department store, you want your favourite author to sign your book, and e-books cannot be signed yet”, she adds. “In fact, young readers use paper books more than adult readers. This is because we tend to choose our book formats according to our needs: if you read on your commute or read in other languages, then e-books are perhaps the best choice”.
Of course, there is a fetishist element in the choice for paper books, Orúe remarks: “If you are going to read the Harry Potter saga, you will want to read them in paper format, and you will want to see all the books together, filling a shelf in your bookcase. With e-books, it is like they are never fully ours. Sometimes, we tend to forget this”.