Hay Festival Cartagena 2025

To open the Hay Festival Comunitario programme, the journalist Catalina Gómez Ángel offers her traditional workshop for reporters. For over ten years, the Hay Festival Cartagena has been running this community journalism project in which, guided by a professional, participants learn to find new ways of putting their surroundings into words.

Tatiana Velásquez (Colombia), co-founder and reporter for La Contratopedia Caribe. Social communicator and journalist, graduate of the Autonomous University of the Caribbean (in Barranquilla) with a Master’s in Investigative Journalism, Data and Visualisation from the Rey Juan Carlos University in Spain, with a Google fellowship. She has worked at the Colombian media organisations El Heraldo, El Tiempo and La Silla Vacía, and has published articles in El Espectador, Spain’s El Confidencial, Vice Latinoamérica and ColombiaCheck. At this event, she will give a journalism workshop.

Carlos Vives is a living legend. Named Person of the Year in 2024 by the Latin Recording Academy, Vives is one of the most prolific recording artists and most loved musicians in the Spanish-speaking world. He has been in music for over three decades, winning two Grammys and 18 Latin Grammys. He has worked with artists of all kinds, from Rubén Blades to Shakira, and he has become an ambassador of Colombian culture to the world. He will talk to Andrés Mompotes about his extensive musical career.

In a town that appears on no maps, where there is no electricity, a teenager dreams of being a boxer. When she learns that her uncle will box for the world title, and the event will be shown live on television, she and the community are ready to overcome any obstacle to see the fight, while they struggle against being forgotten. Directed by Felipe Holguín.

Duration: 83 min.

If we wish to create most just societies, with an equality of opportunities and rights, it is important to analyse the structural racism that exists around us. We talk to four experts from four countries in the region about how to counter racism through education and change: with Mario Ellington (Guatemala), a Garifuna lawyer and former Vice-minister of Culture in Guatemala; Mónica Moreno Figueroa (Mexico), university professor; Federico Pita (Argentina), activist and intellectual; and Roberto Zurbano (Cuba), a cultural critic and essayist; in conversation with Yoseth Ariza Araújo, Director of the Centre for Afrodiaspora Studies at the ICESI University.

The professor Marcus du Sautoy (United Kingdom) is renowned for his work as a mathematics communicator. In his latest publication, Thinking Better, he reflects on shortcuts and their reputation as ways of cheating; but for Sautoy, they are legitimate tactics of the creative process. The author explains how this is reflected in mathematics, in ‘the art of the shortcut’. Together with Rodrigo Quian Quiroga (Argentina), he will talk about the brain’s capacity to code abstract ideas as well as the work done by Quian Quiroga on the “Grandmother cell”. A session that reflects on the relationship between science and art, and the representation of science in film, as dealt with by Quian Quiroga in his book NeuroScienceFiction.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

John Sellars (United Kingdom) is a lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway and is a founding member of the Modern Stoicism organisation. He is the author of the acclaimed Lessons in Stoicism and Epicurus and the Art of Happiness. His most recent book, Aristotle: Understanding the World’s Greatest Philosopher, offers ways to understand the thought of one of the most influential individuals in the history of the West. Sellars shows how his philosophy has been and continues to be important, and how his ideas can be a part of a path towards a fuller life. In conversation with Pablo Montoya.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

A conversation about Guillermo Cano, a figure to whom we are in debt for his determined journalistic ethic and commitment to the freedom of expression, and whose murder we continue to remember as one of the greatest losses in the history of our country. Almost a century after his birth, we celebrate the life and legacy of the journalist, writer and editor of El Espectador newspaper. With María Jimena Duzán (Colombia), journalist, political commentator and writer; Daniel Coronell (Colombia), director of Los Danieles and Head of News at Univisión; and María Elvira Samper (Colombia), an award-winning writer and journalist who has been at the helm of a number of Colombian news organisations. In conversation with Juan David Correa.

In 2025, the Hay Festival celebrates 20 years of conversations and thought in Colombia. To mark the anniversary, we have run a collaborative project in which Colombian society has helped us to put the twenty key questions for our time. This panel invites us to reflect on the vital nature of the sciences, nature and the future of research based on the questions: How can we guarantee the rights of animals and plants? Can science meet the demand for meat and fish with protein created in a laboratory? How can science tackle the problems of mental health and prolong our life expectancy? How can extensive farming by made compatible with protecting biodiversity in Colombia? With Jennifer Ackerman (United States), Wieldler Guerra (Colombia), Rogelio Mejía (Colombia), María Negroni (Argentina) and Javier Cajiao (Colombia).

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available