“Live counting and count living.” With these words the King has defined the work of Luis Mateo Díez who, this Tuesday, received the Cervantes prize, the most important of Castilian literature, in a solemn ceremony that was held in the auditorium of the University of Alcalá de Henares . The Leonese writer has summarized his work and his life by proclaiming “my characters save me”, a phrase with which he closed a speech that has ranged between bonhomie and the depth of the reflections of a man who, above all, loves life.
The writer Luis Mateo Díez (Villablino, León, 1942) has received, from the hands of the King, the Cervantes Prize 2023, the highest award for literature in Spanish, in a ceremony presided over by the King and Queen, which was also attended by the president. of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz-Ayuso and other authorities.
An award granted every year by the Ministry of Culture and which was given to him last November for “being one of the great storytellers of the Spanish language, heir to the Cervantine spirit, writer in the face of all adversity, creator of imaginary worlds and territories. ”.
The King, as in previous years, closed the ceremony with a speech in which he reviewed the work and the figure of the winner. “Luis Mateo Díez,” he said, “has practiced all genres with mastery and, therefore, it is not surprising that hybridity is an outstanding feature throughout his career: novels built on the basis of stories, essays interspersed with stories or vice versa, fables unified in a cycle and autonomous narratives that grouped together constitute a suggestive narrative mosaic.
Felipe VI, who has been in charge of presenting Mateo Díez with the medal and sculpture that accredits him as the Cervantes Prize, has highlighted as one of the hallmarks of the writer’s work “the expression “diseases of the soul”, relevant In his fictions there are many characters who suffer from physical, mental and spiritual ailments, which leads to reflection on the condition of each individual and their way of being in the world. The author’s ambition to create a particular human comedy is achieved with. you grow.”
Finally, he described the writer as “a formidable creator of worlds and imaginary territories, who, as he himself says, lives by telling and tells by living; because fiction is an essential part of existence.”
The winner, who days before had joked about his fear of tripping when climbing the pulpit stairs, has spoken from the heart and with literature, remembering his condition as a post-war child and the conditions of his origin in a mining town in León , to affirm his “precarious inability to write.” In his speech, Mateo Díez has recognized that his characters “do not have so much nobility but they are aware of some heroic exemplarity, since their adventures are consummated by turning the corners where destiny and the consequence of some perdition or the expectation of a dream await that I could save them. I live devoted to them, since they are the ones who save me.
“What happens in my existence, what my biography proposes, nothing interests me less than myself, and I say this with a suspicious radicality,” he indicated. And this writer, creator of the mythical imaginary territory of Celama, has explained how telling life has always been his aspiration, that he has lived literature in the “conquest of what is foreign” and that Don Quixote came to him as a child as a “endearing” hero, until he began to know that he was more of an “antihero” to whom his characters began to resemble, who are, rather, “heroes of failure.”
The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, has professed his “great” admiration for Luis Mateo Díez at the Cervantes Prize award ceremony and has highlighted the “unmistakable” and “very personal” universe of his work, in which “the Cervantes shine.” and the universal of oral tradition”. Sumar’s spokesperson also wore the mandatory morning suit to attend the ceremony.
Mateo Díez, creator of the imaginary territory of Celama, arrived almost an hour early to the venue, dressed in a morning suit and stating that he was “very excited” and hoping “that everything goes as it should be”, in addition to recommending the reading to everyone to “live better.” Widowed, since the pandemic, the writer has been accompanied by his two children, his grandchildren and other relatives.
Once again, this year’s Cervantes Prize ceremony has once again included a winner in the traditional ceremony in Alcalá de Henares, something not so common since in three of the last four editions it could not be held due to absences and postponements. It was the Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas, last year, when he took up the tradition.
This year the usual date of April 23 has been recovered again, compared to 2023, which was moved to Monday since it coincided with a Sunday. The Cervantes Prize is celebrated every year on April 23, coinciding with the date of the death of the writer Miguel de Cervantes, and only until now could it not be celebrated on that date in 2020 and 2021, due to the pandemic. of coronavirus.
Both Joan Margarit and Francisco Brines received the award in a private ceremony attended by the Kings and which, for the first time in the history of the award – in operation since 1976 – was not held on April 23, which It coincides with the day of the death of the writer Miguel de Cervantes.
Two years ago the award ceremony did not include the winner, Cristina Peri Rossi, who delegated her participation in the event to the actress Cecilia Roth, due to health problems. In fact, when the award of the prize was announced, the delicate state of health of the Uruguayan writer, who was suffering from bronchospasm at the time, was also known.
Last November, the jury of the ‘Miguel de Cervantes’ Spanish Language Literature Prize, corresponding to 2023, chose the writer Luis Mateo Díez as the winner of that year’s edition. The prize is worth 125,000 euros and is the most prestigious award for literature in Spanish.
The only author to have been awarded the National Prize for Fiction and Criticism twice, and who also has the National Prize for Spanish Literature among many other recognitions, Luis Mateo Díez is one of the most prolific writers on the Spanish literary scene.
After receiving the award, the winner, who is also an academic from the RAE, will begin the XXVIII Continuous Reading of Don Quixote in the afternoon, at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. On Wednesday he will be the guest of honor at the meal that the Kings will offer at the Royal Palace to representatives from the world of culture.
