2023-04-26 10:11:55
Felipe VI, along with Queen Letizia, presided over the lunch at the Royal Palace of Madrid each year offered to a representation of the world of letters on the occasion of the delivery of the 2022 Cervantes Prize to the Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas, who received it on Monday at the Auditorium of the University of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid).
In the presence of the 93-year-old winner, the monarch assessed that after 48 editions, the most important award in Spanish literature has gone to a writer from “a great American country” like Venezuela.
Before more than a hundred academics, writers, booksellers and publishers, the head of state has claimed the strength of Spanish, “the great space that unites mestizo lands and peoples.”
«The Spanish has in this condition one of its main hallmarks. It coexists happily in a fruitful exchange of voices, realities and cultures in which we all recognize each other”, he emphasized.
In Felipe VI’s opinion, Cadenas’s work forcefully expresses fundamental values of Spanish, such as “freedom, dialogue and understanding, forged over so many years of meetings between brother nations” who share this language.
As he already did at the Cervantes Award ceremony, the king praised the poetry of the Venezuelan author, for whom “the word is freedom and does not understand borders.”
“He knows failure, defeat, loneliness and exile, but also the highest feelings of the human being,” Don Felipe pointed out about Cadenas, who suffered prison and exile in the mid-50s.
The anecdote of the act took place at the end of the speech, when the king encouraged the diners to toast the Spanish language, Cadenas and the validity of Cervantes’ ideals.
However, the guests have not been able to raise their glasses as they did not have cava in them.
“We will toast when there is a chance to do so,” the monarch jokingly came up.
Among the writers participating in the lunch were Javier Cercas, Luz Gabás, Cristina Araújo, Ray Loriga, Manuel Vilas, Ildefonso Falcones, Eva García Sáenz de Urturi and Juan Gómez-Jurado, among others.
The Minister of Culture and Sports, Miquel Iceta, has led the group of authorities, together with the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero.
As in the award ceremony, Cadenas was surrounded by his children, Silvio and Paula, his son-in-law Matías and his granddaughter Andrea.
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