In another presentation in which Ernest Urtasun He once again haggled over the questions of the journalists who follow the current affairs of the Ministry of Culture, the minister assured that the reduction in the working day for which his party is fighting means saving time … for culture, and specifically for reading. «More free time, especially more quality time, is more time for culture. Reducing the working day and gaining time in life also gives us the opportunity to gain culture. In this case, time for reading. And for this reason we are going to reduce the working day also to gain culture in our country,” said the minister and spokesperson for Sumar at the presentation of the Barometer of Reading and Book Purchasing Habits in Spain 2024.
The Federation of Editors’ Guilds of Spain (FGEE), author of the study, and the minister himself, boasted that 70.3 percent of the Spanish population over 14 years of age reads books. Or at least that’s what respondents say when asked. The small print, on the other hand, qualifies the optimism. This percentage refers to those who open a book at least once a quarter, and who have an average of reading one title a year. The percentage of those who describe themselves as frequent readers – those who read a book a month – drops to 51.2 percent. In both cases there are increases compared to previous years. Daniel Fernandezpresident of the FGEE, highlighted that the pandemic was a boost for reading books and that this boost is still alive.
Ernest Urtasun highlighted another fact, the one that interested him the most in order to insert the message of the working day into his speech: that leisure readers exceed 65 percent of the population for the first time. This figure includes frequent readers and occasional readers. It could be said that the minister celebrates that Spaniards open a book from time to time. Compared to this somewhat diffuse percentage of readers, there is another that admits no doubt: the 34.5 percent who say they never or almost never read. The study draws the robotic portrait of the Spanish reader: a woman with university studies who lives in an urban environment. And it is concluded that the main reason given for not reading books or not doing so more frequently is lack of time, something that occurs more among women than among men and between 25 and 65 years of age, that is, the population who is of working age.
«We need more time to read more. A statement that immediately leads us to some urgent current reflections such as work hours, work-life balance, care and mental health,” said Urtasun, who also linked a society’s reading rates with well-being rates. “Reading is the intimate basis of a just and egalitarian society.” In the week that the minister left they exist”, since reading “cannot be manipulated or monopolized by anyone” and because their contents “never expire” nor are they subject to algorithms: “Reading is the opposite of misinformation and hoaxes.”
At the end of the event, which Urtasun closed amid the usual applause and photos, this pen approached the minister with the intention of asking him about the issues that affect his department. «Speaking of books, any opinion on Velintonia?» No luck. Nor could the journalists ask him about the National Bullfighting Award that nine autonomous communities launched yesterday together with the Senate and the Toro de Lidia Foundation. Urtasun summoned the specialized informants to an upcoming press conference – no date – and left to do more important things.
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