In the only window on the ground floor of this white house was the room where the twin sisters Dulce and Inmaculada Chacón were born on June 3, 1954, next to the Plaza Grande in the town of Zafra (17,000 inhabitants). This is how they are remembered on the façade of what is now a hotel, two plaques and an information post. Daughters of the mayor of the town during Franco’s regime between 1960 and 1965, Antonio Chacón, both took the path of literature. However, cancer took Dulce on December 3, 2003, at the age of 49, when she was enjoying recognition as a writer thanks to her novel The sleeping voice (2002). After his death, a narrative prize was established in Zafra in 2004 in his honour, for works whose “fundamental value” had to be “literary quality” and which were also linked to three essential principles in his life and work: “Dignity, justice and solidarity”.
However, the reference to those three words was removed from the rules when the 19th edition was announced on April 11 by the mayor of Zafra, Juan Carlos Fernández Calderón, of the PP, which outraged the author’s family. To the point of withdrawing the name from the award. This forced the mayor to cancel it on July 8, and last Friday, Dolores and María, Dulce’s daughters (her brother Eduardo could not attend) and the writer’s sister announced in Mérida that the contest would continue, but without ties to the City Council of the town where she was born and which inspired her books. Now it will be announced by the Provincial Council of Badajoz (PSOE).
In addition to the house where Dulce was born, there are other places in Zafra that make up a route for those who want to visit important places in her life, when the weather allows it these days. Like the square with her name, where several of the tiles from the plaque have been torn off these days of controversy, and her grave. That of a left-wing woman who was involved in different campaigns: against gender violence, against the Iraq war or so that the relatives of those killed in the Civil War could recover the remains of their loved ones abandoned in ditches. As Rosa Regàs, a writer who died this week, said, “hers was a committed literature, in which she rebelled against what she considered unjust.”
Another stop on the route is the Town Hall, a former 17th century convent that has been the seat of the City Council since 1881, with a beautiful courtyard with a fountain. The mayor emerges from an office.
— Lord Mayorabout the Dulce Chacón award…
— I’m not going to make any further statements, I’ve already said everything. I’m closing the controversy. If Dulce Chacón’s family thinks the prize is theirs, then let them take it.
Inma Chacón found out about the new rules in May, when she went to the Zafra book fair. “The mayor changed it unilaterally, he didn’t tell us anything,” says the person who is Dulce’s testamentary and literary executor by phone. “The prize recognized works published the previous year that defended these universal principles, which are not exclusive. We only wanted them to be reinstated.” In the new competition, “only literary quality” would be valued.
What led the mayor to get into this mess? Two sources confirmed to this newspaper that it all started in December, at the award ceremony for José Ovejero. His speech irritated Fernández, a discomfort that reached the writer that same day. “My speech must have lasted 25 minutes and the political references were like a minute. I said that when the PP leaves culture in the hands of Vox, censorship occurs. I mentioned it in the wake of what had happened with the representation of Orlandoby Virginia Woolf, in Valdemorillo (Madrid),” he says by phone.
“It is a dereliction of duty when the coalition partner is allowed to establish what culture should be and who is financed. It is something that I do not accept on the left either. But I think what was most annoying was when I said that we were in a global drift with Trumpism, Bolsonarism [por Jair Bolsonaro, expresidente brasileño] and Ayusoism. If the right in Spain identifies with [Isabel Díaz] Ayuso, we have a problem,” he added.
Sheepdog, who this Saturday published an article in Tide On the subject, he believes that “the obligation of those who speak in public is honesty, to say what they think.” “If I had kept quiet, I would have been a hypocrite. I said it politely and I wasn’t worried about being annoying. Being mayor doesn’t give you the right to decide who can speak or what they can say. Although it is true that the change in the prize was due to that, I am very sorry.” The author of Other people’s lives She has followed this matter “with sadness” because it is an award that made her “very excited”. “It had nice aspects, like being dedicated to a writer that I admire and the tradition of the popular jury.”
Thus, another elimination announced by the mayor was that of the popular jury, which, although Chacón admits that it was not in the previous rules, had been organised through “four reading groups from Zafra, each of which chose a novel to compete for the prize”. “It was a way for people to participate”, he explains. There was also a jury of experts, who made their proposals, and a final jury, which took into account the selection of the other two juries. For Fernández, it was an “opaque” process.
The prize had a prize of 9,000 euros and a sculpture by the artist Iñaki Martínez, Hug“which represented the love that Dulce felt for Zafra”. However, in the new rules the work disappeared, it was established that the winner should “be present at the award ceremony; otherwise he/she will be deemed to have renounced the award”, and that he/she would have to pay for his/her travel to Zafra and accommodation.
On May 14, when the finalists were announced, Fernández, who, ironically, is the author of a biography of the Chacón sisters’ father, stressed that he wanted to “give a new air” to the contest, “more focused on Extremadura and linked to the literary field,” and described the award as “the flagship of Zafra.”
Just three days later, Chacón’s family published a manifesto in which he demanded a return to “the old foundations of the prize”. A letter signed by cultural figures such as the writers Miguel Munárriz, Nativel Preciado, Rosa Montero, Marta Sanz, Manuel Vilas, Javier Sierra, Clara Sánchez, Julio Llamazares, Alejandro Palomas, Juan Cruz, Ana Rosetti, Aurora Luque and José Luis Ferris, and prize winners such as Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Luis Landero, Fernando Aramburu, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Belén Gopegui, Antonio Soler and José Ovejero.
The mayor’s response was an article in a magazine in which he defended his power to decide the bases and a new type of jury, which would have “maximum freedom, without being constrained.” In the midst of the controversy, the Minister of Culture of the Junta de Extremadura, governed by the PP, washed her hands: it is a decision of the mayor, she pointed out.
After several failed attempts at mediation, the family finally sent a letter to the mayor on July 1. [adelantada por EL PAÍS]in which he withdrew permission for Dulce Chacón to name the award. A week later, Fernández gave the press conference in which he called it off. In it, he stated that it was all “an orchestrated campaign” against his decision and that the crux of the matter, the values of dignity, justice and solidarity, conditioned the jury, “which undermined pluralism.” Values that, as Fernando Aramburu had written in an article in this newspaper, do not exactly induce “robbing banks.”
Fernández argued in his appearance that “other authors with other principles, equally valid, could not be eligible for the prize.” In passing, he criticized the expenses incurred in some previous editions and concluded that since he was not “willing to waste more time on this issue” because in Zafra there are “many more important things,” he was cancelling the prize so as “not to discredit the image” of the city. However, he announced the call for another one for next year for an unpublished work.
The last chapter of this story was written on Friday, with a renewed Dulce Chacón Prize for Spanish Narrative. In addition to the Provincial Council (which will pay the 9,000 euros) and the Regional Government of Extremadura, each year a different Badajoz Town Hall will be added, where the award will be presented. “In 2024 it will be Mérida and in 2025 Almendralejo, where our parents were born,” announced Chacón.
There will also be a jury of 15 experts, “including two professors and six literary critics” (two from EL PAÍS). Afterwards, a final jury and two popular ones (one from Zafra and the other from the city that rotates each year) will decide the winner. The ceremony will be held the weekend closest to the date of Dulce’s death (December 3).
Zafra has been left without the Dulce Chacón prize, but Dulce Chacón has not been left without her prize. However, the most important thing is her books, such as the collection of poems Against the discredit of altitude (1995), his biography of the bullfighter Cristina Sánchez, the novel Skies of mudAzorín award in 2000, and above all, The sleeping voicethe last one she was able to write. A selection of them is on hand for those who stay at the hotel that was her home. In a corner of the dining room there is a shelf with the titles and a plaque: “Corner dedicated to Dulce Chacón.”
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