November will kick off with the 5th edition of the Xàbia Negra festival

Thursday 27th October 2022 – Mike Smith
Source: Álvaro Monfort (XAD)

The start of November in Xàbia will be immersed in the darkness of crime and mystery when the fifth edition of the XÀBIA NEGRA festival returns. This literary event marks its first five years with a poster that reflects the successful evolution through its successive editions during which it has abandoned the darker tone of its first years.

The event will take place over the weekend of November 6th to 6th and will extend its programme to the three urban centres of the town, with activities ranging from talks, reading clubs, literary meetings, monologues, theatre, a concert and an express short film contest with a prize of 300 euros.

Writer Alicia Jiménez Bartlett will headline this fifth edition of Xàbia Negra and will be presented with La Criminala award, which was instituted in 2021, for her extensive literary career. She has published 24 novels and received a dozen literary awards, including the 2015 Premio Planeta 2015 for her work entitled ‘Hombres Desnudos’. Her latest novel, La Presidenta, is immersed in Valencian political corruption through a character that has great parallels with Rita Barberá, a former mayor of Valencia who died in mysterious circumstances in 2016.

In addition to the well-known local murder by La Criminala, there have been other lurid events in Xàbia in recent years. Teresa Domínguez, head of events for the newspaper Levante-EMV, will narrate three crimes that occurred in the municipality, an unbeatable opportunity to learn about the most recent dark moments of the town. It will take place on Friday 4th November at 7.00pm in the Casa de la Cultura in the heart of the historic centre.

An hour later, in the same venue, novelists Mónica Rouanet, Jerónimo Tristante and Blas Ruiz Grau will be looking at the mixture of elements that are required to write a good thriller or crime novel. During the same afternoon, at 5.30pm, Rouanet will be attending the reading club at the library in the historic centre with her novel ‘Nada Importante‘.

Other activities include a meeting of Blas Ruiz Grau who will discuss his work with students from the educational centres in Xàbia on Friday 4th November. Later the actor and narrator Domingo Chinchilla will give a monologue ‘Noir Historias que Cuentan’ at 10.30pm at the Taberna Malabrasa.

The second reading club will place at 11.00am on Saturday 5th November at the library in the port zone during which novelists Jordi Colonques and Joan Canela will present their novel ‘Monumental‘ set during the fiesta of the Fallas. At 1.00pm in the Restaurante Sotavent in the port, authors Vicente Garrido and Nieves Abarca, who have been regulars at the festival since its inception, will celebrate their debut work, published ten years ago, with the novel ‘Crímenes Exquisitos‘.

At 10.30pm, Manuelita Gastrobar in the Arenal will be hosting an acoustic concert that combines neo-soul, jazz, funk and reggae styles with loops and multi-instrumentation.

The festival will close on Sunday 6th November at 12 noon in the Casa de la Cultura with the battle of writers in which five authors will have to write a story with different ingredients in just four minutes. This will be followed by the delivery of the La Criminala award and the prizes of the express short film contest, organized by the Escola de Cinema Riurau.