Reading crosses borders and helps us fully immerse ourselves in a magical world. Carmen Bayarri, the Director of the Bibliographic Service of ELEVENsays: “In the end, the imagination that makes us evolve reading, gives us that ability, to those who do not see, to see. And, indeed, to be equal”

The ONCE Social Group and the Editorial Division of Planeta present their new coupon for Book Day 2023. In total, five and a half million will be distributed throughout Spain under the slogan “Reading makes us equal”. After the first coupon with a Forges cartoon, each year an illustrator from the Editorial Division of Planeta takes over the coupon graphic. On this occasion, the commission has been for Vanessa Borrell, known in the art world as Lady Desidia.

The artist explains that she has drawn “a woman who reads, a woman who is focused on the book she is holding in her hands, which is a book that sprouts, which is alive, a fragrant garden and also a sound garden that sprouts from the headphones she is wearing”.

The presentation has been received at the House of the Book of Gran Vía, within the actions on the occasion of its centenary. They have had the presence of the Deputy General Director of social services for people affiliated with ONCE, Andrés Ramos; the Director of the ONCE Bibliographic Service, Carmen Bayarri; the Director of the Editorial Division of Grupo Planeta, Jesús Badenes, and the illustrator, Lady Desidia.

This initiative is one more example of the collaboration that began four years ago for the agreement to adapt books and audiobooks for blind people. This year they will participate in the Javier Cercas and Lorenzo Silva Literary Meeting, on April 19. Jesús Badenes, the Director of the Editorial Division of Grupo Planeta, adds: “They have been 4 very fruitful years in which new initiatives come out every year but always with the same objective, which is to bring reading to all Spanish homes.”

In the year 2022, around 13,500 different users used some of the services and made half a million downloads from the Digital Library, of which 21,100 were in braille, to be read with specific electronic devices. The average cost of adapting a book to braille exceeds 1,600 euros and 1,200 for sound.