Irene Vallejo, 20minutos award: “Without words there would be no story, we speak because we are, but we are because we speak”

The writer and philologist Irene Vallejo has been one of the winners this Tuesday in the 20 minute prizesa great evening held at the Teatro Real in which Vallejo thanked him for his award by appealing to his origins, to the strength of words, writing and all his readers. “When we come into the world we are a bundle of inertia and we need to learn. Together we are more and better than the sum of our isolated parts. That is why my first words must be for the Henneo group and all the readers who give life and meaning to everything I write,” he highlighted.

Her beginnings have taken on great importance in her speech and, as she has narrated, the writer began in the world of work with the help of Encarna Samitier, director of 20minutos: “Encarna reached out to me when I was a young apprentice and accompanied me in those first insecure and trembling steps. My writing school was the columns of Alto de Aragón, that corner of the Yerunes, where I began my path under his guidance and his lucid advice.”

At his side, he highlighted, discovered the value of “team building” as well as building “hand in hand”, for this reason, he has reiterated his gratitude to Encarna, for “knowing how to change the rules and break down prejudices.”

“The path through the forest was not simple, letter by letter, step by step, it went up steps. Over time, that girl had a son. The baby came into the world with a strange illness, he couldn’t breathe. In a far away country, debt would have suffocated my future. But in the lands of the Ebro, one winter night ten years ago, a hospital greeted me. And I, with no more debt than a thousand chests of gratitude, was able to fulfill the reckless desire of my childhood. Public health made me free. It allowed me to make my dream come true. Thanks to the efforts of everyone, to the work of many,” Vallejo also highlighted her story as a mother.

As a philologist, Vallejo has not hesitated to also have a few words about the work of writing, highlighting her “love” for the professions of the verb: “Without words there would be no story and there would be no love. We speak because we are, but we are because we speak. Today it is urgent to act when language begins to wither, twitch or wear out. When it is used more as a weapon than as mortar.”

For all these reasons, the writer has called for words to serve to “build”, but also to “reconstruct”, an objective for which she has pointed out that there are a large number of people who “they try to tell stories that are useful” in the face of the chaos of the world. Finally, quoting Antonio Machado, he highlighted that “You only lose what you keep, you only gain what you give.” “In the loom of this nervous and pulsating world, we are a tapestry of thread and intelligence. We are all in danger together. We are the destiny of others,” he concluded.

The writer combines her role as a writer – she has just published ‘The Inventor of Travel’ (Ed. Siruela) – with an intense work of disseminating the classical world that has taken her all over the planet to give courses and talks. A contributor to the newspaper Heraldo de Aragón and El País Semanal, she has published, in addition to essays, novels and books of children’s literature, compilations of her journalistic articles, such as Someone spoke of us (2017) and The future remembered (2020).