Storytelling as encounter: day one of the Happiness International Workshop in Valencia
- Societa Solis
- Mar 24
- 3 min read
On 23 March 2026, the Valencia Public Library (Pilar Faus) hosted the first session of the Happiness in Practice International Workshop, a European Erasmus+ project bringing together Italy, Spain and Belgium around a shared goal: to promote positive psychology, community resilience and wellbeing in adults through shared cultural practices.
More than 30 participants over 50, Italian and Spanish, gathered among the library's stone columns and vaulted ceilings to share something rare: a morning devoted to reading, dialogue and self-discovery through literature.
A door opened onto complexity
The text chosen for this first session was The Door by Magda Szabó, a 1987 Hungarian novel translated into more than 40 languages and awarded the Prix Fémina in 2003. An intense and unresolved story revolving around the relationship between a writer and her housekeeper Emerenc — an elderly, strong, mysterious woman who has never let anyone into her home. Emerenc's closed door is the symbol of everything: the inviolable right to a private boundary, dignity as an absolute value, and the genuine difficulty of truly understanding those we love.
One single word
After the project presentation by Ana María Solís — Happiness in Practice coordinator — and the welcome from Salvador Espert of the Centro Sanitario del Convento de Jerusalén, facilitators Domingo Ferrandis (ESA) and Paco Inclán (Pilar Faus Library) opened the circle with an apparently simple question: one single word to say what this book left in you.
From that word, a debate was born that no one wanted to stop. Obsession. Betrayal. Dignity. Boundary. Broken trust. Love that destroys. Words wove together in Italian and Spanish, revealing how two different cultures can recognise themselves in the same deep questions.
Italian participants tended to approach the text through the psychological dimension — guilt, pain, the emotional complexity of the bond. Spanish participants more often entered through the door of social relationship and power — dependence, betrayal as a public act, the role of the neighbourhood as witness. Two different but complementary perspectives, enriching the collective reading in a way that neither group could have achieved alone.
The small group debate
Participants divided into mixed Italian-Spanish groups to discuss deeper questions: is the guilt of someone who tries to save another person against their will justified? Can a truly equal relationship exist between such different worlds? When is a lie an act of love, and when is it a violation?
The answers were not unanimous — and this was recognised as the novel's strength. You can destroy someone by loving them: this phrase, emerging in more than one group, said everything the book leaves unresolved — and that life so often leaves unresolved too.
The session closed in a warm and enthusiastic atmosphere. Participants congratulated one another on the quality of the exchange and on the rare opportunity to engage across cultures through literature.
Happiness in Practice: literature as a tool for wellbeing
The reading circle was not a cultural exercise for its own sake. The themes that emerged in the debate — dignity, boundaries, care, emotional dependency, guilt — are precisely the themes that the Happiness in Practice project addresses in daily work with healthcare workers, older adults and local communities. Positive psychology does not ignore pain and complexity: it moves through them. And this morning in Valencia, it did so through the words of Magda Szabó.
The workshop continues on 24 and 25 March with the Empathy Circle, the launch of the trinational Community of Practice, and a visit to the Valencia Museum of Fine Arts.
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