The Spanish writer Luis Mateo Díez (León, 81 years old) has won the Cervantes prize. The jury highlighted his “unique prose, which surprises with its continuous and new challenges.” He has also emphasized “his expertise and command of language, as well as his expressionist humor with which he portrays human complexity.” The author of The kingdom of Celama (invented region in which almost all of his work takes place) was a teenager who dreamed of killing Franco, but who soon felt that his life should go more along the peaceful paths that have been provided for him by hundreds of friends who have helped him fulfill the desire “not to be left alone.” He has won the Critics’ Award twice and the National Narrative Award twice.
The Miguel de Cervantes Prize for Literature in the Spanish Language, created in 1975, annually grants official recognition to the literary set of a work by an author in the Spanish language, to which writers in that language are presented, regardless of their nationality. . Maximum recognition in the Spanish language, the prize is endowed with 125,000 euros. In its history, six women have received it and the last five winners have been poets.
This year’s jury was made up of the two winners of previous editions, Cristina Peri Rossi and Rafael Cadenas, and the director of the Royal Spanish Academy, Santiago Muñoz Machado. Also part of the jury, at the proposal of the Cuban Academy of Language, were Luisa Campuzano; by the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE), Antonio Lorente; by the Union of Universities of Latin America (UDUAL), Laurette Godinas; by the Cervantes Institute, Javier Rioyo; by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, Raquel Lanseros; by the Federation of Associations of Journalists of Spain (FAPE), María Jesús Chao; by the Latin American Federation of Journalists (FELAP), Juan Carlos Camaño, and by the International Association of Hispanists, Madeline Sutherland-Meier.
A few years ago, what was a usual alternation of the award between Latin America and Spain was broken, since in the 2020 and 2019 editions the Spanish poets Francisco Brines and Joan Margarit won the award. While in 2022 it was the Venezuelan poet Cadenas who won the award and a year before, in 2021, the Uruguayan author Peri Rossi. The award will be presented on April 23, the day of Miguel de Cervantes’ death, in a ceremony in the Auditorium of the University of Alcalá de Henares, presided over by the Kings.
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