Four years after it was launched as a pioneering initiative to support culture and local commerce, the Zaragoza City Council has just renewed the annual agreement that will promote collaborative activities with the Zaragoza Bookstore Association.. This agreement, which both launched in 2020, receives a budgetary boost with the highest allocation so far thanks to a 50% increase over last year.
The new agreement, signed this morning by the Councillor for Education, Paloma Espinosa and the president of the city’s booksellers, Oscar Martin, includes 15,000 euros with which both parties undertake to promote reading through various cultural activities.
Espinosa expressed her satisfaction for the “consolidation” of an agreement in which, she said, “Zaragoza wins”, since it generates a collaboration network between bookstores and libraries that promote the love of reading, on the one hand, and shopping at local businesses, on the other.
Since the Zaragoza City Council signed the first agreement 4 years ago, several collaborations have taken place, such as the Escape Book projectproject, in which some 300 schoolchildren from Zaragoza participated last school year, or the programming of some activities in the Kiosk of Lettersa former library converted into a space for reading and culture of the José Antonio Labordeta Park.
PURCHASE OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC FUNDS
This morning’s signing also extends the validity of the Second Framework Agreement that allows for the annual purchase of volumes that renew the collections of the entire Municipal Public Library Network from the city’s bookstores. Purchases are made on a pro rata basis among all the bookstores that wish to join this project, in order to strengthen the muscle of the local economywhile inviting all citizens to become users of these municipal facilities.
This pioneering agreement at the national level has become a reference that other institutions want to replicate, such as the City Council of Seville, which has requested information about it, or the Central Government, with a proposal from the Ministry of Culture, after verifying the success of Zaragoza.