May 9th is Europe Day, commemorating the Schuman Declaration and the beginning of European cooperation that gave rise to the EU. Taking advantage of this anniversary and the current context, in which authoritarian, identity-based, and ultranationalist tendencies, both internal and external, threaten European unity, we need more voices like that of Theodor Kallifatides, an author who, in writing about himself, also writes about the history of Europe, seeking to look to the past to reflect on those wounds that remain unhealed and that can help us understand who we are today.

Theodor Kallifatides, a Greek-born author who became a Swedish citizen—but whom we could easily describe as European—is a staunch advocate for a committed, just, transnational, diverse, and egalitarian European culture, founded on peace and the defense of human rights. Through retrospection and questioning of the past, as he has done, for example, in his recent war trilogy comprised of the novels Peasants and Lords, The Plow and the Sword, and A Cruel Peace (2024, Galaxia Gutenberg), he delves into the identity and roots of his people, his family, and migrations. Through the inner history of his people, in which the mythological tradition of Ancient Greece is also present, we come to know the deepest recesses of the human soul with all its cruelty and all its love. In the midst of a storm of threats and rearmaments, economic ups and downs, wars, televised bombings of the civilian population, and the most absolute loss of empathy and humanity, Theodor Kallifatides anchors himself in what is important in the face of fear: what leads us to lose respect for the lives of others?

For the past two decades, el Círculo de Bellas Artes acts as Casa Europa In Madrid, a pioneering space for debate and cultural exchange with a European perspective. Our purpose is to be a meeting point for civil society that transcends the traditional limits of academic and political discourse. Casa Europa It is a commitment to dialogue, transnational culture, diversity, freedom of expression, and the ongoing construction of what it means to be European in the 21st century. As part of this strategy, el Círculo It is part of the European Alliance of Academies, Cultural Action Europe and the New European Bauhaus.

In this meeting on May 7, Theodor Kallifatides made a plea for peace and spoke with Bruno Pardo, a journalist from the ABC newspaper.