The Cervantes Prize jury chose Rafael Cadenas “for his vast and extensive literary work” and because his work “demonstrates the transforming power of the word.” The award will be presented in Spain on April 23, the day that commemorates the death of Miguel de Cervantes. In 2018, Cadenas received the Reina Sofía Award for Ibero-American Poetry in Salamanca and in her speech she advocated confronting the newspeak used by totalitarianism and called for the return of “democratic normality” in Venezuela
Photo file: Daniel Hernandez
The Minister of Culture and Sports of Spain, Miguel Iceta, announced this Thursday, November 10, that the 92-year-old Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas was the winner of the Cervantes Prize in its 2022 edition.
Iceta indicated that the jury chose Cadenas “for his vast and extensive literary work, the jury recognizes the transcendence of a creator who has made poetry a reason for his own existence and has taken it to heights of excellence in our language.”
He stressed that Cadenas’ work is very important and “demonstrates the transforming power of the word.”
In May 2018, Rafael Cadenas was awarded the Queen Sofia Prize for Ibero-American Poetrythus becoming the first Venezuelan writer to receive this distinction for the “literary value that constitutes a relevant contribution to the common cultural heritage of Ibero-America and Spain”, and according to the selection jury, he was awarded the honor for “having given us doubts, certainties, words, reflections on the word».
The award he received it in October of that year in Salamanca and in his speech he called for the democratic normality in Venezuela and he exhorted to confront with language, the Newspeak of totalitarianism.
Rafael Cadenas received the Reina Sofía Award in 2018 in the city of Salamanca
Now, with the Cervantes Prize, considered the most prestigious of letters in Spanish, Cadenas will also obtain a cash bonus of 125,000 euros. The award ceremony is scheduled for April 23 at the University of Alcalá de Henares, hometown of Miguel de Cervantes, author of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote of La Manchathe same day on which his death is commemorated.
The king and queen of Spain, Felipe VI and Letizia, will be present there to deliver the award to the winner.
*Also read: Rafael Cadenas: «Creating idols is typical of dictatorships, not of democracies»
#LAST MINUTE | Iceta announces that the Miguel de Cervantes 2022 Castilian Language Literature Prize goes to the Venezuelan Rafael Cadenas for “making poetry a reason for his own existence” https://t.co/bW1UrD3A0Q pic.twitter.com/gc64YnI3Qh
— Europe Press (@europapress) November 10, 2022
Since 1976, the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sports has awarded it at the proposal of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language and by the winners of past editions.
With Cadenas, 22 Latin American authors have received the award. The first, the Cuban Alejo Carpentier in 1977, and in recent years the Uruguayan poets Ida Vitale and Cristina Peri Rossi have received it. Spanish have received 26 authors.
In 2021, the Cervantes went to the Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi.
Born in Barquisimeto in 1930 and currently living in Caracas, the poet and essayist Rafael Cadenas has received numerous awards for his work, including the National Prize for Literature in his country (1985), the Romance Languages Prize in Mexico (2009) and the García Lorca Prize in Spain (2015).
This year, Cadenas was in a group of names that were also nominated to compete for merit. Among them, the Spanish writers Enrique Vila-Matas, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Álvaro Pombo, Luis Goytisolo, Félix de Azúa, Fernando Savater and Luis Landero stand out; Latin American authors such as the Colombian Fernando Vallejo, the Chilean Raúl Zurita or the Mexican novelist Ángeles Mastretta.
With information from The country / Europe Press / RTVE / D.W. /
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