Patrici Tixis, re-elected president of the Spanish Federation of Publishers’ Guilds, proposes to improve reading and reading comprehension rates by 2050

Last week the Plan for the Promotion of Reading 2021-2024 was presented. At the presentation, some personalities from the book sector were able to talk, who proposed different alternatives for the coming years, among them, Patrici Tixis.

The re-elected president of the Federation of Publishers’ Guilds of Spain, Patrici Tixis, took advantage of his intervention during the presentation of the Plan for the Promotion of Reading 2021-2024 designed by the Ministry of Culture to propose the improvement of reading rates and reading comprehension as one of the country’s strategic challenges defined for 2050.

🙌🙌🙌 En su intervención, Patrici Tixis Pte de @FGEEenlinea ha propuesto incluir la mejora de los índices de lectura y la comprensión lectora como uno de los desafíos estratégicos de país definidos para 2050

— FEDERACIÓN EDITORES (@FGEEenlinea) December 23, 2021

Last May, the President of the Government presented the study «Foundations and proposals for a Long-Term National Strategy» with the horizon set on 2050. A document included nine challenges among which were some such as productivity, and the pattern of economic growth, education in the younger population, training, and retraining of the workforce, among others. «A list of nine challenges that, in our modest opinion is incomplete. That is why we offer a tenth challenge. To clearly improve reading rates and achieve 100% reading comprehension.»

In his speech, Patrici Tixis pointed out that «challenges such as productivity and economic growth; education; training; balanced territorial development; labor market deficiencies; inequality or the conversion of progress into well-being would be easier to achieve if our society not only read more, but also improved reading comprehension». And he pointed out that «improving the rates of reading and reading comprehension, as well as recovering the teaching of humanities, which have lost strength in the educational curricula, is equivalent to providing citizens with tools so that they can better understand the society in which we live, its history and its social context; to improve the medium and long-term professional skills of citizens; to help them digest the flood of information that invades us to transform it into knowledge; and, in short, to awaken the critical spirit».

The president of the FGEE added that «between all of us we have managed to create an awareness of the importance of reading and the necessary institutional impulse. In fact, at many levels of the different administrations of the State (autonomous communities, deputations, and town councils throughout Spain), resources are being used to design their own plans. We should be able to coordinate them and involve those responsible for education in all the administrations so that the results would be more relevant».

The Federation of Publishers’ Guilds of Spain is committed to working in the coming months to reach a social pact for reading in Spain that involves the entire government, the autonomous regions, city councils, political parties, the educational community, bookstores, libraries, the publishing industry, public institutions, all private companies, and social agents that feel concerned by this pact. It would be a great agreement that should be extended beyond the duration of the legislatures to prevent it from being relegated to the political ups and downs of the country.