Menudo Castillo

Menudo Castillo sounds like a literary field trip that wandered into a radio studio and decided to stay on air. It is mostly Spanish, fast, and deliberately untidy. The program puts children near the center of the microphone, then sends them into interviews, games, poems, festivals, libraries, schools, and cultural events. Recent episodes travel through Caudete, Madrid, Teruel, Colmenar del Arroyo, and other corners tied to books and childhood culture. The format is elastic. A guest may arrive to talk about theater, an illustrated album, comics, family travel, or children’s books, but the conversation keeps being tugged sideways by young voices asking what they actually want to know. Sometimes that means a serious question about writing. Sometimes it means McDonald’s or Burger King, Real Madrid, spaghetti, cats on keyboards, or how to rescue belugas from ice. The result is not polished literary programming. It is warmer than that. Menudo Castillo keeps the crossed wires, repeated questions, little corrections, and live-room confusion that most shows would edit away. Those rough edges give it charm and credibility, especially when children from schools and libraries take over the interview table. The show also has a strong event-reportage streak. It captures the atmosphere of book fairs, rural reading celebrations, comic gatherings, workshops, author signings, and classrooms where literature becomes something to touch, paint, perform, and talk back to. Its humor can be cheeky, but the center stays generous. Books matter here because they gather people. Children matter because they are allowed to be funny, impatient, odd, shy, sharp, and delighted without being flattened into a lesson. The recurring “hora pirata” style bits and playful quizzes add a ramshackle variety-show feel. Even the closing moments often keep the backstage texture: thanks to organizers, jokes about social networks, microphone confusion, or children still negotiating what comes next. For PlayNext, the appeal is immediate. Menudo Castillo is children’s literature with crowd noise, classroom nerve, and a live-radio grin.