7th ISLA Festival. Love & Live. Love & Laugh.

Boleros are to love stories what The Parthenon is to Classical Architecture or the Ulysses to the modern novel: a universal code and a referent. Every seven years our cells die off and allow for new tissue to grow, tissue that keeps us alive. ISLA arrives to its 7th year and looks at itself in the mirror: it does not want to regret what could have been and never was. We only live once and we should learn to love and live, in the words of Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velázquez, that have been sung by a thousand troubadours from Los Panchos to El Cigala. We will only celebrate ISLA’s seventh birthday once hence why we wish to show the infinite diversity of the Spanish-speaking world through two universal driving forces: love and humour. From Cervantes to Edna O´Brien, from Antonio Machín to Lisa Hannigan, singing about love (and its demons) has been one of the main endeavors of poets, singers, novelists, filmmakers, philosophers and playwrights.