The delivery of Spanish Language Literature Award “Miguel de Cervantes” to Rafael Cadenas will take place at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain, at 6:00 am (Caracas time). The act will be presided over by the kings Felipe VI and Letizia. The writer from Lara is the first Venezuelan to receive this distinction, the most important award for letters in Spanish
This Monday, April 24, the Venezuelan poet and writer Rafael Cadenas (Barquisimeto, Lara, 1930) receives the Miguel de Cervantes 2022 Prize for Literature in the Spanish Language in Spain, from the hands of the Kings of Spain, Felipe VI and Letizia.
The ceremony will be held in the Auditorium of the University of Alcalá de Henares – World Heritage Site in 1998 – at 12:00 noon (Madrid time), 6:00 am Caracas time. The event will be broadcast live on the channel in Youtube of the educational campus.
The author of around the language (1985) is the first Venezuelan to receive this distinction, the most important award for letters in Spanish, granted by the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Iberian country. He won recognition for having “made poetry a reason for his own existence and has taken it to heights of excellence in our language,” the jury highlighted.
The news was received on November 10, 2022, at his residence in Caracas, “while reviewing a notebook with notes that he wishes to publish, when the phone rang. He was a Spanish friend who called to give him the news,” she told the news agency. EFE.
«I am struck down. I need time to recover because I still don’t believe it,” he confessed hours later to the Venezuelan journalist Diego Arroyo.
Cervantes is not the first prize he has received in Spain: in 2015 he won the Federico García Lorca International Poetry Prize and three years later with the Reina Sofía Ibero-American Poetry Prize.
The route of Cervantes 2022
Cadenas arrived in the Spanish capital on April 19 – a festive date in Venezuela on which the declaration of Independence is commemorated – but before migrating to the Adolfo Suárez de Baraja airport, his mark and words were already present in the streets Madrid: posters with his face and his statement: “Literature is a wall against barbarities”, are part of the 2023 Book Day poster, produced by illustrator Sergio García Sánchez, winner of the 2022 Spanish National Illustration Award.
What a treat! This is what the Plaza del Rey looks like in Madrid today with the image of the Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas. pic.twitter.com/T9cbX9K6l7
— Egleetina (@Egleetina) April 21, 2023
24 hours later, he was at the National Library of Spain, accompanied by the general director of Books and Reading Promotion, María José Gálvez, where he gave a press conference, in which he avoided advancing his speech for the ceremony on the 24th. of April, but it appeared that it will connect with “the involuntary poetry” that runs through The Quijote “in many of its expressions”; a work that he describes as a “masterpiece”, which “intoxicated” him in his adolescence and to which he returned years later with “another perspective”.
In 2014 in an interview with Leonardo Padrón for The Impossibles He confessed that it is the book that he would steal 100 times.
The #BNE receives the poet Rafael Cadenas, #PremioCervantes2022for a meeting with the press together with the director
General Book and Reading Promotion @librolecturagobMaria Jose Galvez
Salvador, and Ana Santos Aramburo, @BNE_director. pic.twitter.com/vltCxc9M05— National Library of Spain (@BNE_biblioteca) April 20, 2023
After this meeting, he went to the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, to begin the Continuous Reading of Don Quixote.
“In a place in La Mancha, whose name I do not want to remember, not long ago there lived a hidalgo of those with a lance in a shipyard, an old shield, a skinny hack and a greyhound for runner”, pronounced the author of initial songs (1946), after 6:00 pm (Spanish time) on Thursday, April 20. Activity that culminated this Sunday, April 23, after 40 uninterrupted hours of reading the greatest work in Spanish.
“In a place in La Mancha, whose name I do not want to remember, not long ago lived a nobleman of those who spear in a shipyard”
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Rafael Cadenas
Cervantes Award 2022#Day of the book #YoLeoElQuijote pic.twitter.com/809RvrAjgI— Circle of Fine Arts – Casa Europa (@cbamadrid) April 20, 2023
This same day the Venezuelan Academy of Language announced the election of Cadenas as an honorary member of the corporation, “for his poetic work and his literary and intellectual career.”
The Cervantes in Venezuela
Last March, a series of activities began in Venezuela to celebrate Cadenas, on the 21st, World Poetry Day, the foundation the poet –organizer of poetry contest that bears the name of the Larense bard– organized a continued reading in honor of the also essayist and university professor.
On April 15 and 16, a group of artists honored him with the show I come from a strange kingdom, stage proposal by Miguel Issa, which included the participation of the leading actress Caridad Canelón, Antonio Delli, Valentina Garrido and the writer Rafael Castillo Zapata.
Thus we began the celebration of the #International poetry day today in the Plaza del Mijao in Mene Grande, with the words of Ricardo Ramírez Requena (@maqroll30), where we pay homage to the poet #RafaelCadenas pic.twitter.com/doEsFNpzJh
— La Poeteca Foundation (@Poeteca1) March 21, 2023
This April 24, after the Cervantes ceremony, the Spanish Embassy in Caracas will carry out a public reading of poems by the Granada-born author Federico García Lorca, 125 years after his birth, and the Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas. The event will begin at 10:00 am, in Plaza Isabel la Católica de la Castellana.
This activity is organized jointly with the @AVeLengua and the @Chacao.
You are all invited to participate in the reading that will take place in Plaza La Castellana, Isabel la Católica, starting at 10 in the morning!#DíaDelIdiomaEspañol #SpanishDay #Spanish language pic.twitter.com/tgFhsF2rjt
— EmbEspVenezuela (@EmbEspVenezuela) April 18, 2023
*Read also: Cadenas: “Venezuelan poetry is a very important phenomenon”
Cadenas, the most important living Venezuelan poet
Rafael Cadenas is considered one of the most important voices in Latin American poetry and is the most important living Venezuelan poet. He was born on April 8, 1930 in Barquisimeto, Lara; From a very young age he was interested in literary creation, at the age of 16 he published his first collection of poems: initial songs (1946). Then little by little he made a name for himself as a poet, essayist, and teacher.
His main inspirations and examples are Rilke and Whitman, as well as Pessoa and Michaux. “In general, the Spanish generation of ’27 was important to me. As I like prose as much as poetry, I really appreciate this group and also that of Machado and Unamuno. I read Savater a lot, and outside of Spain, Reyes and Borges, ”he commented in an interview with The country.
In 1984 he received the Conac Essay Prize, a year later the National Prize for Literature, Poetry Mention and then the Doctorate. honoris causa from the University of Los Andes (2001), from the Central University of Venezuela (2005) and from the Centroccidental Lisandro Alvarado UCLA (2012).
The author of Defeat (1960) has never agreed with Chavismo, whenever he can, he points out the authoritarian nature of the Bolivarian revolution, which has earned him the veto of state editorials and distinctions. This April 24, the Venezuelan government is the only one that does not celebrate Cervantes 2022.
«I would like to point out the importance of language in the exercise of politics. It has the enormous task of confronting the newspeak of all totalitarianism, a danger for human beings because it makes them absolutely dependent on the State”, said Cadenas upon receiving the Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry.
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