As customary, both countries will offer an overview of their creativity and cultural liveliness, and a broad array of elements characterising their societies, from memory to material culture and daily life to the human landscape. Their respective linguistic communities present in Turin and Italy in general will also be involved.

Spain is present with its stand in Pavilion 2. The Spanish "national team" includes writers that are well known in Italy, such as philosopher Fernando Savater, the recipient of the 2011 International Book Fair Award Javier Cercas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Enrique Vila-Matas, Almudena Grandes, Ildefonso Falcones, Clara Sánchez, José Ovejero, Antonio Soler, Julio Llamazares, Rosa Montero, Félix J. Palma, Basque novelist Bernardo Atxaga, and Catalan authors Alicia Giménez-Bartlett, Ricardo Menendez Salmón, Ignacio Martinez de Pisón. Many of these authors are engaged in a close revisitation of the civil war years, looked at from outside the idelological frameworks. Among the most important trend in contemporary Spanish narrative we should mention the historic novel, as represented by the bestsellers authored by Falcones and, more recently, by Jorge Molist and Susana Fortes, who are also present at Lingotto Fiere; and the crime novel. Moreover, two sessions organised by Istituto Cervantes of Milan will be devoted to emerging writers: Jordi Carrión, Pablo d'Ors, Agustin Fernandez Mallo, Alfonso Mateo Sagasta, J.A. González Sainz and Olga Merino, presented by Victor Andresco.

Other events will include a homage to a great hispanist such as Angela Bianchini, a reading of the parallel histories of Spain and Italy, with historian Giovanni De Luna and Julio Llamazares; a round table on women's role in democratic Spain, with Mercedes Cabrera, who served as Minister of Public Education during the Zapatero administration, Emma Bonino, Gianna Pentenero and Marcella Aglietti; a debate on historical memory and national reconciliation, with Ismael Saz, Gabriele Ranzato, Aldo Ruffinatto, Javier Rodrigo and Alfonso Botti. The meetings with the authors will be preceded and followed by readings from Don Quixote and readings of the best pages of twentieth century Spanish poetry, selected by Davide Rondoni, with in between a concert by guitarist José Luis Montón.

With about 260,000 citizens in Piedmont and the adjacent regions of Valle d'Aosta and Liguria, and just under 80,000 in the city of Turin alone, Romanian nationals make up the largest foreign community in the territory of the Book Fair. Not as well known in Italy as it deserves to be, Romanian culture has produced some of the protagonists of the twentieth century: historian of religions Mircea Eliade, playright Eugene Ionesco, philosopher Emil Cioran first and foremost.

Romania, present at the Lingotto since 2009, brings to the Salone (in Pavilion 3) a highly evocative stand, with a strong visual impact, and has defined a rich programme, which, besides the rendezvous at Lingotto Fiere, provides for meetings and events in the city, concerts, performances, and a film cycle at the National Cinema Museum. Among the guests, worthy of notice is the presence of novel and essay writer Norman Manea, recipient of the 2002 International Nonino Award. A dissident during the Ceausescu years, he found refuge in New York, the city of exiles par excellence. With him: Mircea Cartarescu, poet and novelist who studied and toured extensively in Western Europe and is a leading representative of the post-modernist movement; Liliana Lazar, who lives in France at present and is the author of a novel highly appreciated by Nobel Prize Winner Le Clézio, where the atmosphere of ancient fairy tales, and the dark years of Ceausescu intermingle with the vicissitudes of a serial killer; and an appreciable number of novelists, essayists and poets whose works are being translated into Italian, including Dan Lungu, Ana Blandiana, Doina Rusti, Razvan Popescu, Matei Visniec.