In the midst of the celebration for World Book Day, the Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, Prince of Asturias Award of the Letters 2015, called today to make “efforts” in Cuba to rescue readers and revitalize the printing of books, despite economic difficulties.
The author of The man who loved dogs He participated in an act organized by the Cuban Academy of the Language and the Embassy of Spain, in which floral offerings were placed before the statue of Miguel de Cervantes, in the Plaza San Juan de Dios in Havana Vieja.
Padura (Havana, 1955) declared EFE that “in Cuba something very important was achieved, which was to create a reader audience,” but regretted that “that effort has been discontinued”. “Now you enter a bookstore and it is the least attractive place in the world.”
The writer and journalist acknowledged that there is “difficulties to access” the physical book and “economically is not possible because everything is missing, even the paper”, but considered that “we would have to have much more consistent policies with what was achieved years ago so as not to lose it at all.”
“I remember that in the 80s you always found something,” he said, as he insisted that “in the bookstore of a country the books of the classic authors can never miss: in our case the poetry of José Martí or Alejo Carpentier’s texts.”
Leonardo Padura: “There are few reasons to think about Havana with optimism”
The creator of the saga of the Cuban detective Mario Conde also stressed that “writing in Spanish entails a responsibility for writers: we help to nurture this living organism that is the language.”
“We have an invaluable treasure with this language that speak almost 600 million people on both sides of the Atlantic and also has an impressive cultural tradition,” he said about the celebration of World Book Day.
UNESCO promoted in 1995 the celebration every April 23 of World Book Day and copyright to promote culture, reading and protection of intellectual property.
The date coincides with the death of writers Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare and Garcilaso de la Vega.
