Regina Caffaro

Specialist in Education, Assessment and Educational Administration. She developed reading programs in Guatemala and Panama, and designed and led the strategy to select, bid on, purchase and distribute reading and information books to stock the classroom libraries of all the official pre-primary, primary and secondary schools in Guatemala, and pre-primary and primary schools in Panama.

She has led five successful book acquisition processes. She has shared her experience on various occasions with Central American countries that have faced challenges placing successful bids in this area.

Gonzalo Oyarzún

Oyarzún is a librarian with a Master's Degree in Management of Cultural and Creative Industries in Spain, an independent consultant, professor at the Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana de Chile, and a guest lecturer in the United States and Spain, as well as an international evaluator of library projects. He has advised various programs in Brazil, Spain, Colombia, Peru and Argentina.

He was previously responsible for the National System of Public Libraries in Chile; President of Iberbibliotecas, the Ibero-American Program of Public Libraries; member of the Chilean Book and Reading Council, and founder and director of the Santiago Library, the largest public library in Chile.

He has been published in books and magazines, in printed and digital formats in several countries. In 2021, he published La biblioteca imaginada; jardín para sembrar comunidades, which was translated this year into Catalan and Basque.

Margarita Cuéllar Barona

Director of the Regional Center for the Promotion of the Book in Latin America and the Caribbean (Cerlalc), an intergovernmental organization sponsored by UNESCO that works to create the necessary conditions for the development of reading and writing societies. She was the co-creator, editor, and director (2009-2024) of the cultural agitation magazine Papel de colgadura and led the Feminist Pedagogies Seminar and the textile seminar El Costurero, a space for studying, reading, sewing, embroidering, and weaving. Her research interests include feminist pedagogies, textile crafts, and literature written by women. She has published the novels Geografía doméstica and De viento y de sal.

Other activities involving the participant:

Opening Dialogue: Acknowledging Multilingualism in Science

Lluís Zendrera

Invitado de Honor

Born in Barcelona. He went to high school at the Liceo Francés and went on to major in Economics at Bellaterra and then in Law at the Universidad de Barcelona.

In 1985, he went into the family business, Juventud publishing house, founded in 1923. His passion for books led him to get increasingly involved. After a two-year stay in Colombia, he began building remarkable relationships with Latin America and created a personal and institutional network to promote reading, meeting altruistic individuals with whom he continues to collaborate, such as Irene Vasco, M.ª Elvira Charria, and Olga Cuevas. His aim was to have Spain contribute to the Latin American market and promote reading in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Guatemala, Peru, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador and the United States. This goal is now more alive than ever.

He was responsible for the committee on children's literature in the publisher's build many years ago, and four years ago he took over the Catalan section of the Spanish Organization for Children's and Young Adults Books (OEPI) and, three years ago, the presidency of IBBY España (OEPI). He is currently a member of the IBBY Executive Committee and the coordinator of IBBY Latin America and the Caribbean, a member of the IBBY Prize Jury for the Promotion of Reading, and IBBY liaison for the Regional Center for the Promotion of Books in Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLALC).

Other activities involving the participant:

Current status of children's and young adult literature in Spain