The International Festival of Travel and Adventure Literature, Periplo, concluded today in Puerto de la Cruz after a week filled with discussions, presentations, and encounters. Under the theme 'Humanity that Resists', the festival brought together over thirty local, national, and international authors, transforming the city into a literary beacon of stories and geographies.
During her speech, journalist Loreto Gutiérrez Prats remarked, “A helping hand can change things.” Fellow journalist Javier Brandoli reflected, “When you travel the world, you realise that people are very much alike; it is the circumstances that change.” Author Antoinette Tidjani emphasised, “Identity is not something fixed; we all flow.”
The festival commenced on 19 October with the opening of the exhibition 'Journeys: Migrant Minors, the Long Journey', a project by José Naranjo and Juan Luis Rod that reconstructs the stories of thirteen young individuals who arrived alone in the Canary Islands. Throughout the week, topics such as the memory of exile, the transformation of the Canary Islands, and the fight for human rights were explored.
The festival also examined Latin American perspectives and diaspora, as well as the history of Aboriginal peoples in Australia. Music and the geography of the Mississippi, science, and documentary filmmaking expanded the festival's boundaries to include various languages and forms of storytelling.
The event concluded with a discussion featuring journalist Rosa María Calaf, Nicolás Castellano, and Dolors Mañé on 'Peace Journalism: Journalism and Cooperation Against Oblivion', an initiative by the Vicente Ferrer Foundation.
