Time & Location

Nov 29, 2025, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM

Backstory English Bookshop, Carrer de Mallorca, 330, L'Eixample, 08037 Barcelona, España

About the event

Pre-order the book here!

Join us for a special evening with philosopher Santiago Zabala, author of Signs from the Future. A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia University Press, 2025). Spending a day without being warned about climate change, nuclear threats, or artificial intelligence is challenging. We are constantly warned but seldom listen—that is, interpret and take action. This only happens when we are pressured and emotionally affected. People often stop smoking, for example, when someone close becomes ill rather than because of physicians' warnings. Their illness is seen as a sign from the future that calls for action because there is something they can do. Zabala’s new book not only explains why we’re unable to heed warnings but also distinguishes them from predictions. While predictions tell us to accept the inevitable, warnings ask us to take part in shaping a different future. Signs from the Future places thinkers such as Nietzsche, de Beauvoir, and Arendt into conversation with current politics, art, and culture, drawing our attention to unheeded warnings. 

Zabala will be joined in conversation by Libera Pisano, Professor of Philosophy at Pompeu Fabra University, and Daniel Gamper, Professor of Philosophy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

More about the author:

Santiago Zabala is an ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He has authored several books, including Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency (2017), Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (2020), and Outspoken: A Manifesto for the 21st Century (2023, with A. Parr). Zabala has also written opinion articles for outlets like the New York Times, Al Jazeera, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His website is www.santiagozabala.com, and he can be found on Instagram @beingatlarge.