2023-09-14 09:25:41
Manuel Alvar (1923 – 2001) was “an essential figure in the studies of the history of Spanish, dialectology and also the presence of Spanish in the world,” said Luis García Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute.
García Montero has highlighted the legacy that the author of the Hispanic dialectology manual200 books and some 800 scientific articles, he left at an institution like the University of Granada, where he was a professor for twenty years.
Antonio Alvar Ezquerra, son of the honoree, has highlighted the role of the Caja de las Letras as “the sacred temple of Spanish culture” and in which he has deposited a selection of materials with the handwriting of Alvar, a field researcher who ” “Spain and all of America were traveled to learn about the Spanish spoken in every corner of the planet.”
This selection is made up of six field notebooks in which the dialectologist collected, at the beginning of the fifties, the oral tradition of the Sephardic ballads in the north of Morocco, frozen in time and typical of funerary work, only known to women. .
As an example of his work as an explorer, two questionnaires are also included – from Las Palmas and Huesca, used to make the atlases of the Canary Islands and from Aragón, Navarra and Rioja, respectively – that he used for his exhaustive interviews with farmers and locals to extract knowledge from the Spanish language and lexicon of their trades.
The deposit also includes a copy of Aragon, literature and being historical, a work with which he won the National Prize for Literature in the essay category (1976); as well as several publications: Studies on southern languages (2004) y Spanish in two worlds (2002), dedicated to studies on Latin America; pilgrim steps (1991), about his work as a researcher; and the anthology of his poetry, Pomegranates in the bouquet (1983).
A photo of Manuel Alvar with his wife, Elena Ezquerra, on the day he received the National Prize for Literature, and the biography she wrote after the death of the researcher and linguist in 2001 complete the legacy.
In addition to the deposit in the vault that houses the Cervantes headquarters, the Alvar family delivered to the institution’s Heritage Library publications representative of his work as a professor, field researcher and writer.
Several examples of his linguistic and ethnographic atlases stand out, fundamental references in Hispanic philology: from the Canary Islands, which led to the recognition of the Canarian dialect; from Aragon, Navarra and Rioja; of Andalusia or the atlases of Latin America, such as those of Mexico or Venezuela; in addition to copies of four volumes of Lexicon of peninsular sailors. Finally, some publications, including the book of stories lucky islands (1975).
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