Guadalajara will once again put itself on the European cultural map thanks to ANCESTOR, a project led by the Seminario de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil (SLIJ) which aims to promote and revitalise the European Union’s oral heritage through storytelling, training and international cooperation. The initiative has been selected under the Creative Europe programme run by the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), in a call for proposals that attracted 1,029 entries, of which only 88 were successful. As explained during its presentation, ANCESTOR scored 88 out of 100, exceeding the cut-off mark of 86.
The project, whose full name is ‘A Net to Catch European Stories and Tales from the Oral Tradition’, is now the seventh European project managed by the Guadalajara SLIJ and will run for 21 months from February 2026. To this end, the SLIJ is coordinating a consortium comprising organisations from Italy, Slovakia, Latvia and Bulgaria, alongside cultural and social partners from various European countries.
During the presentation, the project director, Blanca Calvo, emphasised the difficulty of securing this European funding and highlighted that the proposal aligns fully with two of the main strands of Creative Europe: the circulation of artists and works, and cultural innovation. In this case, she explained, this innovation applies to a field as ancient as oral storytelling, which is currently undergoing a revival driven by new generations of storytellers and new audiences.
Among the main activities planned is a 15-day creative residency in Sigüenza, between May and June 2026, in which 10 storytellers from different countries will take part, with a particular focus on professionals from Eastern Europe, where this discipline is still less developed. In addition, there will be 25 courses on oral storytelling techniques – five in each country of the consortium – aimed primarily at young people, but also at new Europeans and people with disabilities or in vulnerable situations. The aim is to broaden access to oral heritage and adapt it to diverse social contexts.
One of the project’s most high-profile events will take place in June 2026, when Guadalajara will host, in the days leading up to the 35th Storytelling Marathon, a gathering of 20 ‘Storytelling Places’ from at least 10 European countries. This event will yield one of ANCESTOR’s most distinctive outcomes: the design of two ‘Story Routes’ intended to traverse Europe with traditional tales as their common thread, in collaboration with specialists in cultural tourism.
The programme will culminate in March 2027 with a meeting at Comenius University in Bratislava, where 20 institutions from 10 countries will come together to bridge two fields that have hitherto operated separately: on the one hand, organisations that organise storytelling activities from a practical perspective, and on the other, academic centres that research oral heritage from a theoretical perspective.
Beyond its international scope, ANCESTOR aims to act as a catalyst for consolidating Guadalajara’s status as a ‘City of Tales’. The project aims to strengthen the European Network of Storytelling Sites and Places (ENSST), based in the capital of “La Alcarria”, and to give fresh impetus to pending initiatives such as the Casa del Cuento and the Regional Storytelling Centre. The SLIJ believes that this opportunity could lead to greater cultural and tourist visibility for the city, underpinned by a model of sustainable development linked to storytelling.
In economic terms, the project has a total budget of 250,011.12 euros, of which 200,000 euros will be provided by the EACEA, whilst the remainder will be covered by the consortium partners.
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