Cieza, Archena, Blanca, Abarán, Ulea, Villanueva del Río Segura, Ricote, and Ojós have joined forces to organize the 1st Ricote Valley Book Fair, which, under the motto "The culture that unites us," will run until April 26. The program includes nearly seventy activities aimed at all audiences with the aim of promoting culture and encouraging reading.
This is the first time that the eight municipalities that make up this territory, linked by history and the Segura River, have committed to a joint project. The project's presentation took place this Sunday in Ojós, where mayors and cultural councilors from the eight municipalities, as well as representatives of public libraries and cultural associations from the participating towns, met.
Presentation in Ojós
At the presentation, the mayor of Ojós, José Emilio Palazón, welcomed the attendees, along with the director general of Cultural Heritage of the Autonomous Community of Murcia, José Francisco Lajara, and the councilors for Culture, including María Turpín of Cieza City Council, who attended the event with Mayor Tomás Antonio Rubio and his government teammate María Ángeles Ruiz.
In his speech, Turpín alluded to the origins of this project, which "arises from libraries and the work of library staff. As politicians, we have done nothing more and nothing less than what people expect of us: work and reach agreements. Each of us has been thinking about the same thing, about the general interest, about what we could contribute to our land, to our people. It's the beginning of something very big."
During the event, Manuel Toledo, the person responsible for the promotional poster's design, from Cieza, also spoke and explained his work to the audience. "I chose a common and representative element of all the municipalities in the area that captures their essence: the palm tree." Indeed, the image is designed on a trunk made up of eight books and another open one simulating the leaves in the shape of a plume.
Programming for Cieza
The program planned for Cieza will include book presentations, meetings with writers, exhibitions, poetry and illustration workshops, children's storytelling, theater, live music, poetry recitals, and magic shows. Another highlight of the fair will be the opening of the book stalls on April 19th at 7:45 p.m. at the Esquina del Convento, where participating booksellers and publishers have planned activities throughout the week.
The presentation of the 1st Ricote Valley Book Fair continued with a guided tour of the town's old town and concluded at the Museum of Nativity Scenes of the World, inaugurated in 2013 in the former House of the Inquisition, whose construction dates back to the 18th century. The collection consists of 260 nativity scenes, although the total number of them comprises more than 800.
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