The hobbits will turn Zaragoza into Middle-earth with the Tolkien Encounters

From March 25th to 29th, Zaragoza will transform into Middle-earth, where hobbits and all lovers of The Lord of the Rings universe will explore this magical world thanks to the 24th Tolkien Encounters.

The Smial of Khazad-dûm has organized talks and workshops aimed at bringing Tolkien’s work closer to the people of Zaragoza. These will take place at various locations in the Aragonese capital, such as the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Zaragoza, the Dídola café, and the Salvador Allende and Estación del Norte civic centers.

The program will kick off on March 25th, International Tolkien Reading Day, starting at 6:00 PM at Dídola Café (Don Jaime Street). It will be an afternoon of readings of various excerpts from Tolkien’s works, where you will enjoy his stories, settings, and characters. There will also be an “Interactive Reading of Khazad-dûm,” where members of the delegation read and the audience accompanies the onomatopoeia in the text.

On March 26, the talk “Tolkien and Poetry. Vol. 1” by Germán Ríos “Aldarion” will take place starting at 7:00 p.m. in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. The talk will explore the poems Tolkien wrote primarily during his formative years at Exeter College, Oxford.

A day later, on March 27th, there will be a talk-workshop on “tengwar” writing, the elven alphabet. Javier Aguirre “Súlion” will teach the workshop. It will take place at 7:00 PM in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Zaragoza. The tengwar alphabet is a writing system used to capture some of the languages ​​spoken in Middle-earth on paper.

On March 28th, there will be a talk to meet the Tolkien Society Games Committee at the Salvador Allende Civic Center in Las Fuentes, starting at 6:00 PM. Finally, on March 29th, the talk “Sailing into the Imagined West” will take place . It will be given by Mariano Bayón, “Amrod,” starting at 6:00 PM at the Estación del Norte Civic Center.

This talk seeks to explore the influence of seafaring legends from medieval Irish literature on his work, and unravel how he deliberately used them to create a perfect atmosphere of mystery and melancholy. A sea voyage, from “The Voyage of Éarendel, the Evening Star” to “The Lord of the Rings.”