In its fourth year, the Spanish publishers’ event for film and television producers now has a set of 10 books to be pitched to multimedia professionals for possible adaptation.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

Presentations Set for April 8

As Publishing Perspectives readers will remember, the program from the Federación de Gremios de Editores de España (FGEE, Federation of Spanish Publishers’ Guilds) is set to hold its fourth edition of Rodando páginas—“Rolling Pages: Books to Screen” on April 8 “in hybrid format or fully online,” per the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic restrictions at the time.

Having announced their program a month ago, they today (March 3) have issued a list of 10 titles for their producers’ program on April 8. And as it happens, today’s announcement lands midweek in the industry-facing digital presentation of Germany’s Berlinale. (Our story on this year’s Books at Berlinale event, quite similar to Spain’s Rolling Pages, is here. That event is open to registered producers and will be held Thursday and Friday this week.)

Should a physical edition of the Rolling Pages program be possible, it’s expected to be held, as before, at Madrid’s Casa del Lector, the unique multi-use complex focused on reading and writing at the Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez directed by Luis González.

Having started with 157 works submitted to the selection committee, the program now is announcing the books that will be on offer to producers meeting with  publishers and literary agents, distributors, sales agencies, and key platforms on April 8.

‘Rolling Pages’ 2021 Featured Works

• 15 by David Muñoz and Andrés G. Leiva (Astiberri, 2021)
• Colección Felipe y sus amigos (Felipe and His Friends Collection) by Gracia Iglesias and Sara Sánchez (Ediciones Jaguar, 2016)
• Gordo de Feria by Esther García Llovet (Editorial Anagrama, 2021)
• La mujer sin name (The Woman With No Name) by Vanessa Montfort (Antonia Kerrigan Literary Agency, 2020)
• La pella by José Ángel Mañas (Alt Autores editorial, 2018)
• Las guerras correctas (The Correct Wars) by Gabriel Ochoa (Express Author, SGAE Foundation, 2015)
• Las niñas prodigio (The Prodigy Girls) by Sabina Urraca ( Fulgencio Pimentel, 2016)
• Malasangre (Bad Blood) by Michelle Roche Rodríguez (Dos Passos Literary Agency, 2020)
• Telefónica by Ilsa Barea-Kulcsar (Carmen Balcells Literary Agency)
• Vivan los Hombres caballes (Long Live the Gentlemen) by Guillermo Alonso (Free Children Publishing, 2019)

Digital meetings with the players involved here can be had for €9.90 (US$11.95) and registration for these meetings is available here.

The program, in which these ten works will be pitched to film and television producers and executives, is being mounted by FGEE in association with the Madrid Audiovisual Association, with additional support from the Commune of Madrid, CEDRO, and DAMA.

Past successes of the program have included:

• Tea Rooms, from Luisa Carnés’ Working Women
• Lamia by Rayco Pulido, National Comic Award
• A Mother by Alejandro Palomas
• Superpatata, a children’s comic by Artur Laperla
• Happy ending by Isaac Rosa

Organizers tell us that a sixth work is play now and should be made public soon. Projects already going forward as a result of the program and the adaptations it has produced cover productions including television series and feature films, both live action and animation.

The selection committee this year comprises:

• Casandra Macías and Marina Maesso , scriptwriters and script analysts at HBO Spain
• Concepción Cascajosa, professor of Audiovisual Communication at UC3M
• Diego Rodríguez, director of the Margenes Festival
• Guadalupe Balaguer, producer
• David Martín de los Santos, filmmaker

The Coronavirus in Spain

At this writing, the 7:26 a.m. ET (1226 GMT) update of the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center sees 3,130,184 cases in Spain’s population of 47 million, with 69,801 fatalities.

These numbers place Spain in seventh place in the world for caseload behind the United States, India, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Russia, and France. In its death toll, Spain is 10th in the world, behind the States, Brazil, Mexico, India, the UK, Italy, France, Russia, and Germany.

At El Pais, Borja Andrino, Daniele Grasso, and Kiko Llaneras report that Spain has administered two doses of COVID-19 vaccine to 2.6 percent of the population.

In a sobering passage, they write, “Although the pace of the vaccination drive picked up in the last week of February, the rollout has been more or less steady over the month: every day, 0.17 percent of the population is injected with one dose, which equates to around 500,000 people per week.

“At this rate, the European Union’s target of vaccinating 70 percent of the adult population before the summer—amounting to 58 percent of Spain’s total population—will not be met. If the current speed is maintained, barely 20 percent of the total population will have received two doses by September.”

Here’s a video with scenes from the 2019 ‘Rolling Pages’ event in Madrid.

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More from us on the Spanish market is here, more on rights sales and trends is here, and more on the issue of books’ adaptation to film and other screens is here.

And more on the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on international book publishing is here.