Preston heads cast for Hay Segovia

The crisis may have seen scores of cultural events axed across Spain, but the Hay Festival goes on. The Segovia branch of this increasingly international venture - which now travels between around a dozen global locations, from Mexico to India, and from Kenya to the Maldives - is back on schedule with a literary and artistic selection of activities clustered between September 22 and 25.

With a program that claims to encourage debate around issues in literature, science, the arts and current events, Hay Segovia is structured into readings and open talks between leading personalities in each field. Anyone who attended the 2007 edition will recognize many of the same speakers, from the historian Paul Preston to the writer Javier Marías and the editor of EL PAÍS Javier Moreno.

Preston, an acclaimed specialist in modern Spanish history and who this year published The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain, will discuss major events in the evolution of modern Spain, such as the failed coup of February 23, 1981, with Luis María Anson, a massive and always controversial figure of Spanish journalism who founded the rightwing La Razón newspaper after leaving Abc. The next day, Sunday, Preston will revisit post-Civil War Spain in a chat with the writer Elena Moya.

One of the biggest literary stars of this year's Hay Segovia is Arturo Pérez-Reverte, an author of popular historical novels who has often been likened to Alexandre Dumas, and whose work has been made into movies on numerous occasions, including Alatriste and The Fencing Master, among others. On Saturday, the Spanish writer will chat with Mexican author Elmer Mendoza about the way drug trafficking in that country has permeated all other aspects of life, including culture.

Another literary powerhouse, Javier Marías - a critically acclaimed Spanish novelist and acerbic weekly columnist for EL PAÍS - will be in Segovia on Friday for a talk with Juan Gabriel Vásquez, himself an author and winner of this year's Alfaguara Prize for El ruido de las cosas al caer. But perhaps the most curious addition to Hay Segovia, if only because the public is unfamiliar with his literary side, is Vicente del Bosque, the successful coach of the World Cup winning Spanish soccer team and previously Real Madrid. On Saturday, Del Bosque is slated to talk to sports journalist Oscar Campillo and David Bach, of the IE Business School, about teamwork and strategy development.