The Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli (Managua, 1948) is the winner of the XXXII Reina Sofia prize for Ibero-American poetry, as announced yesterday by the president of Patrimonio Nacional, Ana de la Cueva, and the rector of the University of Salamanca, Ricardo Rivero – the two institutions that grant the award -.
The jury, who unanimously awarded the prize, highlighted his “creative expressiveness, his poetic freedom and courage and his significance in the contemporary culture of Nicaragua which reinforces the prestige of one of the great countries of Spanish-American lyricism” .
“It was not an easy decision”, indicated De la Cueva, who explained that they have recognized Belli among the 49 candidates who “reflect the variety of our letters and the prestige of the award”. Rivero emphasized that the Nicaraguan writer joins a list of “wonderful poets” who claim the values ​​that institutions and universities defend and fight against tyranny.
A fight against dictatorships that has even led to the Nicaraguan authorities withdrawing his nationality in February, along with 317 other opponents, for “treason to the country”. For some time now, the writer has denounced that “Nicaragua is living a dictatorship the likes of which has not been seen in Latin America in decades”, and she knows what she is talking about, since she herself fought alongside the current president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, and until and everything was in the government after the Sandinista triumph in 1979, but in the 1980s he left official politics to devote himself to writing.
Belli will receive next autumn, from the hands of Queen Sofia, the award, endowed with 42,100 euros – in addition to the publication of an anthology and academic conferences -, the most important poetry in Spanish and Portuguese and which recognizes the whole of the work of a living author which, due to its literary value, constitutes a significant contribution to the common cultural heritage of Ibero-America and Spain.
The jury for the edition of the XXXII Reina Sofia award is formed, in addition to De la Cueva and Rivero, by the director of the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Machado; the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis GarcÃa Montero; Olvido GarcÃa Valdés, awarded in the previous edition; the Mexican writer Jorge Luis Volpi; the poet Raquel Lanseros; the director of the National Library, Ana Santos Aramburo; the representatives of the department of Spanish and Ibero-American Literature of the University of Salamanca M. Isabel Toro Pascua and Francisco Bautista; the professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid Selena Millares, and the director of the Ãngel González chair at the University of Oviedo, Araceli Iravedra.
