From the 11th to the 13th of September, Madrid will host the third edition of the independent literature and publishing festival Back To The Book at Casa del Lector, within the Matadero Madrid complex down by the river. Admission is free and the festival combines book sales with conversations, presentations, signings, workshops, live podcasts, music, coffee and the opportunity to spend time among people like you who are seriously into books.
Back to the Book is not quite a conventional book fair but nor is it simply a literary festival where authors appear on stages and readers sit and listen. It’s an attempt to bring together the different players in independent publishing: people who write books, people who edit and publish them, the booksellers who put them into readers’ hands and the readers themselves.
Back to the Book is a relatively young festival. It grew out of the work of Librería Altamarea, an independent bookshop that opened in Madrid’s Arganzuela district in late 2021, only a short distance from Matadero. From the beginning, Altamarea was conceived as more than a place to buy books: the shop developed a programme of workshops, reading groups, book launches and storytelling events, with a particular interest in independent Spanish and Latin American publishing and Italian literature.
The festival grew from that same idea of building a literary community around the bookshop. Its first edition took place in September 2024, establishing Back to the Book as an alternative to the traditional book fair: a meeting place where independent publishers could sell their books directly and where readers could encounter authors, editors and new forms of literary culture in a more informal setting. The response was strong enough for the festival to return in 2025, when its second edition expanded the programme and attracted considerable attention in the Spanish press, with El País describing it as a meeting point for independent publishers, authors, readers and different literary cultures.
By its third edition in 2026, Back to the Book has begun to evolve beyond its original Madrid focus. The festival remains firmly rooted in Arganzuela — its own description calls it “100% made in Arganzuela” — but this year introduces an international Rights Centre and fellowship, bringing European editors to Madrid to meet Spanish publishers, authors and agents and explore translation rights. Editors from Italy, Germany, Greece, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Norway are taking part. That development gives the festival a new purpose: it is no longer simply a place for readers to discover independent books in Madrid, but an attempt to connect the independent Spanish-language publishing world with publishers elsewhere in Europe.
The setting says something about the festival itself. Matadero is not an old literary salon with portraits of dead writers on the walls. It is an enormous industrial complex turned arts centre, home to exhibitions, cinema, theatre, dance, music and cultural events. Back to the Book belongs naturally in that environment: literary culture treated as something living, social and slightly unruly.
Independent publishers will bring their catalogues to Madrid, allowing readers to discover books that might not receive the visibility enjoyed by titles from the largest publishing houses. The festival describes itself as an alternative space for meeting and selling books, concentrating on some of the most interesting proposals coming from independent publishing.
That distinction matters in Spain, where the publishing landscape is considerably richer and more varied than someone encountering Spanish literature from abroad might realise. The literary world is not simply Madrid versus Barcelona, or major publishers versus everyone else. There is an extensive network of small and medium-sized presses, specialist publishers, independent bookshops, literary magazines, translators and cultural projects producing and circulating work across Spain and Latin America. Back to the Book is designed to make that ecosystem visible.
The 2026 programme also makes clear that the festival is not confined to a single idea of what a literary event should be. There are discussions about writing contemporary Madrid, workshops on novel-writing and fanzines, conversations about poetry, archive and memory, literary clubs, children’s activities and live podcasts. One of the attractions is precisely this mixture: you can come to hear a writer talk, buy a book, take part in a workshop, discover a small publisher and then stay for coffee or a beer. And there are some substantial names.
The Mexican singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas will present her first novel, Norteña. Memorias del comienzo. The programme also includes the Spanish comic artist Paco Roca, whose work has brought graphic literature to an unusually broad audience, alongside writers including Marta Sanz, Mónica Ojeda, María Hesse, Brenda Navarro, Jon Bilbao, Sara Torres, María Bastarós, Lana Corujo and Lucía Solla Sobral. The full programme stretches much further, bringing together writers and artists from Spain and beyond.
There is also a particularly interesting international dimension to this year’s festival. Back to the Book has created a Rights Centre and international fellowship for European publishers. A selected group of editors from Italy, Germany, Greece, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Norway will attend the festival, meet Spanish publishers, authors and agents, and take part in professional meetings. Publishers can arrange one-to-one meetings focused on the buying and selling of translation rights. The choice of participating editors is telling. Among the 2026 fellows are Giulia Zavagna of Edizioni Sur in Italy, Linus Guggenberger of Verlag Klaus Wagenbach in Germany, Christina Filimonos of Carnívora in Greece, Richard Village of Foundry Editions in the UK, Maria de Lourdes Afonso of Antigona Editora in Portugal, and Bente Teigen and Signe Prøis of Camino Forlag in Norway.
Back to the Book, then, is becoming more than a Madrid event. It’s becoming a meeting point between independent publishing in Spain and the wider European book world, with particular attention to literature originally written in Spanish. Obviously for us at The Madrid Review it’s fascinating - but we think it also makes it an interesting festival even if you don’t live in Madrid and don’t normally read Spanish.
It is also deliberately, wonderfully accessible. There is no intimidating price of admission and you don’t have to be an industry professional to attend. You can arrive without a plan, browse the publishers’ tables, listen to a conversation and leave with a book you did not know existed that morning. For a city with a huge appetite for books, that is worth celebrating.
Back to the Book takes place from 11–13 September 2026 at Casa del Lector, Matadero Madrid. Admission is free, subject to capacity. Friday’s hours are 4–9pm; Saturday, 11am–9pm; and Sunday, 11am–8pm.
Really cool! I wish I lived in Madrid for this.