The missing Hotel Florida de Madrid occupies an already legendary place in the imaginary of the Spanish civil war. Almost all the foreign correspondents who worked in the capital during the war stayed there. Writers like John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway and what would become his third wife, Martha Gellhorn.
It was also the lodging and meeting place for other correspondents such as Mikhail Koltsov, from Pravda; Geoffrey Cox, del News Chronicle; Henry Buckley, de The Daily Telegraph; the Herbert L. Matthews, from The New York Times.
The building no longer exists, in its place stands El Corte Inglés de Callao, which in its space Cultural field pays homage to the historic hotel next week with the fifth edition of a series of round tables and other activities on literature and journalismcoordinated by journalists Alfonso Armada and Carlos García Santa Cecilia, from the digital magazine FronteraD.
The ukrainian war It concentrates the news of recent months, and several correspondents and special envoys who have been on the ground will participate in these conferences.
An exceptional and forgotten figure of Spanish journalism will also be remembered, Sofia Casanova (1861-1958), which covered (and suffered from) five wars that occurred in Poland, Russia and the Ukraine, among other countries. Furthermore, with the memory of Javier Marias in the background, a colloquium will bring together leading connoisseurs of the spy world that so much inspired the Spanish novelist who died in 2022.
The meetings will be held from Monday, January 23 to Friday, January 27, at 7:30 p.m., in the Callao room of Ámbito Cultural of El Corte Inglés, in Madrid. Admission is free until all places. You can also follow the activities live, as they will be broadcast on streaming on the social networks of Ámbito Cultural (Facebook, YouTube and Instagram).
Colloquia and participants
Monday 23: Sofía Casanova, the great unknown reporter. women war correspondents
Participants: Rosa María Calaf, veteran correspondent and special envoy for TVE; Federico Ayala, Head of Documentation at ABC; Marilar Aleixandre, Galician writer, National Narrative Award 2022 for bad womenand Ana Pastor, journalist for La Sexta and director of Neutral. Moderated by Carlos García Santa Cecilia.
Tuesday 24: Ukraine, Putin and the press
With the participation of the special envoys María Senovilla, journalist freelancecollaborator of The Spanish; Luis de Vega, photojournalist for The country; Óscar Mijallo, journalist from RTVE, and Marc Marginedas, journalist from The newspaper, former correspondent in Moscow. Live connection from Ukraine with María Eulate, head of the RNE program five continents. Moderated by Alfonso Armada.
Wednesday 25. Spies in the fog (the legacy of Javier Marías)
Ignacio Cembrero, a journalist specialized in the Maghreb and collaborator of The confidential who has suffered several persecutions for his work, the last of them for linking Morocco to the Pegasus case. There will also be the journalist and writer Carmen Posadas, whose latest novel, license to spy, is about female spies; as well as Eduardo Martín de Pozuelo, journalist from La Vanguardia specializing in jihadism and espionage, author of books such as Without signal; and Pilar Cernuda, a journalist with extensive experience and parliamentary chronicler. Moderated by Sasi Alami, Director of crystal code an RNE.
Thursday 26. Dramatized reading: the eyes of Martha Gellhorn
The Hernández y Fernández Theater company will give a dramatized reading in which it will address the figure of the war chronicler Martha Gellhorn and her time at the Hotel Florida.
Friday 27. Poetry workshop #LdeLírica: Rafael Alberti
The sessions on the Hotel Florida conclude with a special workshop of the cycle of poetic activities #LdeLírica. The meeting will focus on Rafael Alberti, one of the most recognized poets of the Generation of ’27. It will be directed by Gonzalo Escarpa, coordinator of the cycle and director of La Piscifactoría.
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