HAY FESTIVAL 2025 – Jorge Carrión in conversation with Cristina Rodríguez
What does it mean to defend literature in the age of Amazon? How do we protect cultural spaces when convenience threatens to erase them?
Spanish writer, critic, and cultural theorist Jorge Carrión has emerged as one of the most articulate and passionate defenders of independent bookstores in the face of digital monopolies and algorithmic culture. Through essays, lectures, and investigations, he has made a case for the bookstore —not just as a place of commerce, but as a site of memory, imagination, and democratic possibility.
Carrión’s work challenges the dominance of platforms like Amazon, exposing how they reshape what and how we read, and how those shifts impact local economies, cultural ecosystems, and intellectual freedom. He brings a global perspective to the conversation, drawing from his extensive research on bookstores around the world and his writing on the future of publishing, authorship, and cultural resistance.
Join us for a timely conversation on literary infrastructure, the politics of convenience, and why defending bookstores is about more than just books —it’s about defending how we think, connect, and imagine.