Europe DayEurope
Day'26

9 May

Date:

09.05.2026 — 26.05.2026

Room:

Miscellaneous (check program)

Price:

Free admission until full capacity is reached

Europe is going through a moment of profound redefinition. Between the crisis of its founding narratives, the rise of nationalisms and the emergence of artificial intelligence, culture becomes both a battlefield and a possible compass. This series proposes to think about Europe not from its institutions, but from its imaginaries, its creative practices and its contradictions.

Three sessions. Three conversations. Voices from the fields of writing, journalism, cultural management, law and technology.

For two decades, the Círculo has served as Casa Europa in Madrid: a space to rethink, build and debate Europe from the perspective of contemporary culture, art and thought. From this conviction, the Circle incorporates the European dimension as the axis of its programming and actively participates in the debates that shape the European project, through alliances and collaborative projects with leading organisations in the European cultural field. Imagining Europe from the perspective of culture is born of this commitment: of the conviction that the debates about what Europe we want to be also belong to the citizens.

Program

Saturday, May 9 at 12 noon – Rooftop

What Europe are we telling? With Lorenzo Silva and Montserrat Domínguez.

May 9 is Europe Day, and the Círculo de Bellas Artes is also Casa Europa in Madrid. With this double meaning, we inaugurate Imagining Europe from Culture, a series of debates on the role of culture in today’s Europe. The opening session proposes an open conversation about the narratives that build and erode Europe: what imaginaries are being broken and which are missing, who tells Europe and from where, what threats creative freedom faces and what it means to feel European beyond the institutions. 60 minutes between the writer Lorenzo Silva and the journalist Montserrat Domínguez, on the rooftop, accompanied by a vermouth

Tuesday, May 12 at 6:30 p.m. – Valle Inclán Room

How is culture sustained in Europe? With Antonia Blau and Carlos Almela. Moderated by Jara Díaz Alberola

Europe has ambitious instruments to sustain its culture: Creative Europe, the Culture Compass, transnational networks, private philanthropy. Bridges have been built, projects have been financed, alliances have been woven that did not exist decades ago. And yet, the question remains open: what forms of cultural cooperation are really working, and what conditions would make it possible to go further?

What role does cultural philanthropy play and from what values does it play it? Where are the real limits of artistic mobility and cultural circulation beyond the national? What shared European narratives are we building and which are still pending? A conversation from the experience of those who work in the transnational every day, with the freedom to point out both what works and what is missing.

With Antonia Blau, general director of the Goethe-Institut Madrid, and Carlos Almela, head of cultural projects at hablarenarte and general coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Cultural Management at UC3M. Moderated by Jara Díaz Alberola, Coordinator of International Projects at the Círculo

Tuesday, May 26 at 6:30 p.m. – Valle Inclán Room

Who imagines Europe tomorrow? Esther Paniagua and Eva Moraga

Artificial intelligence is transforming the way culture is created, distributed, and consumed. Europe has responded with the AI Act, a pioneering regulatory framework on a global scale, and yet the most difficult questions remain open: what culture do these systems produce, in what languages, with what imaginaries? What happens to creators’ rights when their works train models without permission or remuneration? Can Europe build its own, pluralistic, multilingual, common good-oriented approach, or does the speed of technological change always leave us one step behind?

A conversation between Esther Paniagua, a journalist who has been mapping technological power and its cultural consequences for years, and Eva Moraga, a jurist specialising in the artistic and cultural sector who defends the rights of creators in the spaces where decisions are made. Two different views on the same territory: what is at stake when we let others decide what culture the machine produces.