The Cuban poet, nationalized Spanish, Manuel Díaz Martínez, died in Spain at the age of 86, as announced by his family on social networks.
Born in Santa Clara in 1936, Díaz Martínez was part of the Royal Spanish Academy and throughout his literary career he cultivated poetry, narrative and journalism.
He also served as a diplomat and was part of the research section of the Institute of Literature and Linguistics of the Cuban Academy of Sciences. On the island he worked as an editor in Today news and The Cuban Gazette.
In 1967 he was the winner of the Julián del Casal National Poetry Prize of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) with the collection of poems living is that and a year later he was part of the jury of that same contest where the poet Heberto Padilla won with Out of the game.
Most critics place Manuel Díaz Martínez among the main writers of the Generation of ’50 and highlight his constant curiosity, his desire to investigate and the desire to discover.
He was one of the signatories of the letter of tenin 1991 addressed to the government, which caused official repudiation and defined his exile.
Based in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria since 1992, he collaborated in the promotion and dissemination of Cuban poets in that country.
Among his best-known titles are the anthologies Cuban poems of the 20th century and A snail on its wayrespectively.
“He went away affirming that he lived an intense life and that, given the opportunity, he would repeat it again with the good and the bad that it gave him,” María Gabriela Díaz Gronlier wrote on her Facebook profile.
Among other laurels, he won the City of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Poetry Prize (1994) and the International Poetry Grand Prize of the East-West International Academy of Romania (1998) in recognition of his body of work.
In a recent interview, he stated: “The homeland, far from what many think, is not the place on the planet where we are born, but the place where we grew up. In other words, where we begin to discover the world and survive in it.“
