Light and shadow on Book Day

Editorial from our sister paper Ultima Hora THIS year, Book Day is being celebrated on Saturday, 24 hours in advance, as the feast of St George falls on Sunday. At all events, weather permitting, it will once again be a festive occasion, praising the delights of reading. It is a pleasure practiced by a good percentage of the population, nearly 53 per cent, although statistics clearly reveal the profile of the person who loves reading. In Spain, it is women, the inhabitants of big cities, young people and the better educated who read the most. But there is more: revealing data indicates that those who read regularly also go to the cinema or theatre more often, travel more, read magazines and daily papers, practice sport, surf the internet and listen to the radio. That is to say, the identikit portrait of the Spaniard who loves books is also that of the person who enjoys culture, who perceives life as an enormous range of possibilities to have fun and to become enriched. This is excellent news. But, alas, at the opposite end of the scale we find that two out of every three Spaniards of the lower-middle or lower classes confess that they never read and they are also those who have less contact with other fields of culture. Thus we have thekey to the success of books: social class. That is to say, culture and economy, hand in hand. All this refers us once again to the crucial importance of school, where reading is suitably promoted from the first years of obligatory education, and which must be encouraged to maintain its aim of making children fall under the spell of the vast world of books. They will be the citizens of tomorrow, and, regarding letters, will undoubtedly be better than we are. Editorial published in the leading Spanish newspaper in the Balearics, on Saturday, April 22.