Every year since 1992, the city of Guadalajara transforms itself into a celebration, a unique celebration with a two-fold character, cultural and participant, as the collaboration of the public is a key element of the storytelling marathon.

It’s the celebration of the word. During the 46 hours of the second or the third weekend of June (from 5 pm on Friday to 3 pm on Sunday), the Palacio del Infantado transforms into a magical stage inhabited by hundreds for storytellers - children, adults, individuals, groups, professionals, amateurs...from here and from there... - all willing to share with the thousands of listeners their stories, anecdotes, narrations, poems...

The unique personality of the Guadalajara Storytelling Marathon is that it is based on something as intangible as the word, the thousands and thousands of words knitted by the storytellers, day and night, a weekend when sleep and meals become secondary because these words nourish the soul. To know more about it, you can see our Storytelling Marathon section.

In 2012, the European Union gave the “Mysteries of Europe. XXI Storytelling Marathon” a grant under the Culture Programme 2007/2013 (support for Festivals) thanks to which this festival of the word will feature the participation of prestigious professionals of oral narrative from the 30 countries of the European Union and the European Economic Area.

Because the Storytelling Marathon of 2012 is dedicated to mystery, the narrators, professors, researchers and festival organizers from Europe will bring their luggage full of mystery stories.

Mysteries of Europe will not only be present at the 46 hours of uninterrupted storytelling (with a story at the top of each hour) but will also be the focus of this academic Seminar in which we will advance in the knowledge of European oral literature from the study of common and diverging aspects of the stories and the possible ways of their transmission throughout the European continent.

Another goal of the Seminar, a quite challenging one, is to get together different types of professionals of oral narrative from 30 European countries, encouraging them to exchange stories, theories and ideas that can enrich each other´s experiences.

We hope that by the end of the Seminar we will reach some of these goals. The program designed to face these challenges can be downloaded here.