The city of Gáldar, in the north of Gran Canaria, is preparing to experience a few intense days of poetry with the celebration of the III Baltasar Espinosa Poetry Festivalwhich will take place from April 9 to 12. For four days, the municipality will be transformed into a meeting point for authors of different backgrounds and generations, with a program that combines recitals, book presentations, round tables and guided tours.
under the motto "Poets for a world at peace"This new edition aims to solidify Gáldar's position as a leading center for contemporary poetry in the Canary Islands, while also offering participants the opportunity to explore the town's historical, archaeological, and cultural heritage. The event is conceived as a space for creation, reflection, and dialogue centered on poetic language and its capacity to engage with contemporary reality.
A poetic encounter with an international vocation
The 3rd Baltasar Espinosa Poetry Festival will bring together in the municipality more than 80 poets coming from different islands of the Archipelago, from various communities on the peninsula, and from several Latin American countries. This geographical and generational diversity reinforces the open nature of the festival and his desire to build bridges between different literary traditions and sensibilities in the Spanish language.
As highlighted by the Councillor for Historical Heritage, Archives and Library of Gáldar, Carlos Ruiz MorenoThe third edition of the event reinforces the municipality's commitment to showcasing poetic creation and integrating literature into the city's daily life. For several days, nearly one hundred authors will have the opportunity to explore sites of archaeological, heritage, and tourist interest, as well as experience the local culinary and accommodation offerings.
The president of the Association of Writers Word and VerseJosefa Molina emphasizes that this festival transforms Gáldar into a regional benchmark of contemporary poetryby creating a program that combines literary activities with cultural experiences in different spaces throughout the municipality. The goal is not only to offer recitals, but to generate a genuine network of complicity between authorsreaders and institutions.
The meeting is held in homage to the poet from Gáldar. Baltasar Espinosa (Gáldar, 1937 – Madrid, 2018), whose figure and work motivated the birth of the festival in 2023. Since then, the event has grown in scope and impact, adding more and more participants, collaborating spaces and multidisciplinary proposals linked to the poetic word.
This year, the festival is collaborating with Gáldar City Council —through the departments of Library, Culture and Tourism—, as well as the Antonio Padrón House-Museum and Center for Indigenous Art, the Cueva Pintada Museum and Archaeological Park, the Gáldar Casino and Gáldar Polyphonic ChoirThis network of institutional support reinforces the cultural dimension of the event and the connection between literature and heritage.
A slogan that appeals to peace and human rights
The common thread of this third edition is the motto "Poets for a world at peace"This statement of intent positions poetry as a tool for questioning violence and defending human rights. For the organizers, the festival is not simply a series of readings, but rather a space for collective reflection on the historical moment we are living through.
Josefa Molina herself has pointed out that this motto represents a explicit call for peace In an international context marked by armed conflicts and a worrying drift towards increasingly bellicose positions, the gathering champions the power of words as a resource to denounce injustices, question reality, and uphold the right to life and human dignity.
From the perspective of Word and Verse, those who write handle a powerful tool: languagePoetry is conceived here as an act of resistance that can contribute to challenging the discourse of war and structural violence, appealing to empathy and pacifism. During the festival, this approach will be reflected both in the selection of texts and in the collective activities and panel discussions.
The motto not only inspires the themes of many of the events, but also forms the backbone of several participatory activities, such as the creation of collective poems or readings in symbolic spaces throughout the municipality. In this way, the aim is for the entire city to embrace the spirit of the festival and for the message of peace to transcend the usual venues of literary activity.
Combining social commitment and poetic creation This is one of the distinctive features of this edition, which aims to reinforce the idea that literature is not disconnected from the problems of the present, but can and should engage with them from a critical and humanist perspective.
Festival kickoff: book and exhibition "Key Figures in Canarian Literature"
The program for the III Baltasar Espinosa Poetry Festival will begin on Thursday, April 9th with the presentation of the project "Leading Figures of Canarian Literature"This artistic and literary project combines a book with a portrait exhibition. It is one of the most anticipated events at the start of the festival, as it celebrates the memory and diversity of voices that have shaped the literature of the Canary Islands.
The book "References of Canarian Literature" is part of the Word and Verse Collection This fifteenth volume brings together texts and profiles of 150 Canarian authors, divided equally between 75 female and 75 male writers. The work includes stories, poems, and essays, some of them previously unpublished, accompanied by an artistic portrait of each author, created by an artist from Guía. Eugenio Aguiar.
These prints and portraits form the core of an exhibition that will open at the Flavor Room The exhibition opens on April 9th at 19:00 PM and will remain open to the public until April 19th. Following its run in Gáldar, both the collection of photographs and the accompanying publication are scheduled to begin a [further development/promotion/etc.]. tour of different cultural centers and exhibitions of the Archipelago, thus expanding its reach to other islands and audiences.
The work has a prologue by the poet from Gáldar. Ángel Sánchez, winner of the 2018 Canary Islands Literature Prize, and has been published under the imprint Beginbook, directed by Jorge Liria. From the collection's direction, Josefa Molina has highlighted the pioneering nature of the volume, bringing together for the first time, in a single book, texts and portraits of the main figures of Canarian literature from the end of the 19th century to the present.
For the organization, this is a a unique work within the Canary Islands publishing sceneThis is remarkable not only for the breadth of the cast assembled, but also for the dialogue between text and image it proposes. This combination, they point out, results in a composition of great symbolic value, which aspires to become a reference work for scholars, readers, and lovers of the Archipelago's literature.
Institutional ceremony and Baltasar Espinosa International Poetry Prize
The event will take place on Friday, April 10th. institutional event of the festival at the Gáldar Town Hall Theatre, one of the central moments of this third edition. Within this setting, the poetry collection will be presented. "The remains of nothingness", by the Gran Canarian author Nicolás Fernández Hernández (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1975), who has won the II Baltasar Espinosa International Poetry Prize.
This award, promoted by the Association of Writers Word and Verse together with Beginbook EditionsIt has quickly established itself as a leading competition within the Spanish-speaking world of poetry. "The Remains of Nothingness" is now included in volume number 14 of the Word and Verse Collection, further strengthening the poetic catalog of this publishing line.
The organization has highlighted the high literary quality Of the works received in this second edition of the prize, which has registered nearly 500 poetry collections from around thirty countries. This increase in participation, both in the number of originals and in the diversity of origins, confirms the exponential growth of the competition and its progressive international reach.
The winning author will receive a cash prize of 1.000 Euros and 25 copies of the published work, which reinforces the professional dimension of the award and its function as a platform for disseminating new poetic voices. For the festival, the presentation of this prize is also a way to connect its local programming with a broader network of international poetic creation.
The official ceremony will include the participation of Gáldar Polyphonic ChoirThe event will feature a musical performance and will be complemented by an initial poetry reading session in which several of the attending authors will participate. In this way, the ceremony combines institutional recognition of creative work with an open space for listening and exchanging texts.
Recitals, round tables and cultural tours throughout the city
On Saturday, April 11, the activity will move to the Gáldar Municipal Librarywhere a public poetry reading will take place and the donation of signed books will be formalized for the Poeteca de GáldarThis space, dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of poetry, is thus enriched with new titles and copies, many of them dedicated by their own authors.
Next, the group of poets will travel to the Antonio Padrón House-Museum and Center for Indigenous Art, dependent on the Gran Canaria Island Council, where a guided tour and a new reading session by the collective will take place The Guardians of the VerseIn this same environment, a exquisite corpse of poetry, a collective creation activity in which each participant contributes a fragment of text linked to the motto "Poets for a world at peace".
Later in the afternoon, the programming will continue on the Gáldar Casinowhich will become the setting for several sessions of poetry recitals and two round tables with the participation of authors such as Puri Gutiérrez, Tino Prieto, Isa Guerra, Nauzet Rodríguez, Luis León Barreto, Beatriz Morales, Benita López and Victoriano Santana Sanjurjo, among other guests.
These panels will allow for the exploration, from different perspectives, of issues such as the role of poetry in contemporary society, new forms of literary dissemination, and the relationship between tradition and experimentation in contemporary writing. The day will conclude with a performance by poet and singer-songwriter Yolinda Hernández, which will bring a fusion of words and music to the end of a day of intense cultural activity.
Sunday, April 12th will be dedicated to a Guided tour of the La Guancha-El Agujero-Bocabarranco archaeological siteThe event, led by Juan Sebastián López García, the official chronicler of Gáldar and the island director of Historical Heritage for the Gran Canaria Island Council, will feature new poetry readings, integrating words into a landscape steeped in historical memory and symbolic meaning for the island.
Word and Verse: an association that promotes literary life in the Canary Islands
The driving force behind this festival is the Association of Writers Word and Verse, an organization created in 2015 with the aim of promoting the work of its members and fostering a love of reading, particularly Canarian literature. Since its inception, the association has maintained a constant presence in the cultural life of the islands, and especially in Gáldar, where its headquarters are located.
Palabra y Verso develops an intense activity through its blog palabrayverso.comwhich in 2025 registered more than 35.500 visits from over forty countries. This platform publishes texts by members of the collective and contributors from around the world, as well as book reviews, event reports, and content related to current literary events.
The blog also includes a section on radio programs under the heading "Listen to us"where the broadcasts of "From Word to Verse" are hosted, a radio program that has already aired for eleven seasons on Radio Gáldar. This program allows the association's activities to be broadcast on the airwaves, bringing poetry and narrative to audiences who may not frequent in-person events.
Since its creation, the group has participated in a wide range of initiatives: street readings, recitals, solidarity campaigns such as "books for food"Virtual proposals such as #ConfinementReadings and many other events organized in collaboration with the Gáldar City Council, the Municipal Library, the Antonio Padrón House-Museum, the Josefa Medina Drawing and Painting Academy, the Tomás Morales House Museum or the Gran Canaria Island Council, among others.
The continuity of Baltasar Espinosa Poetry Festival This fits within this line of work, which seeks to create a network of activities where literature is linked to the territory, heritage, and the community. In fact, the next edition of the festival already has a horizon: the organization plans to resume the event in 2028, maintaining a pace of calls for submissions that will allow the project to mature and continue building partnerships.
With this third edition, Gáldar consolidates itself as a key place for poetry in the Canary IslandsThe festival brings together authors from diverse backgrounds around a common goal: to celebrate the power of words and their capacity to generate reflection, memory, and dialogue. For four days, the festival opens a pause in the daily life of the municipality, during which poetry takes center stage in theaters, libraries, museums, archaeological sites, and community spaces, reminding us that, beyond books and recitals, literature also plays a role in how we see and inhabit the world.
