The King pays tribute to Celorio on the eve of the Cervantes award: “Literature is a great school of freedom”

King Felipe VI this Tuesday, April 22, paid tribute to the Mexican writer and Cervantes Prize 2025, Gonzalo Celorio defending that “literature is a great school of freedom.”

This was made clear during the traditional lunch that the Kings offer to representatives of the world of culture at the Royal Palace, on the occasion of the 2025 Cervantes Prize award ceremony, which this edition pays tribute to the award-winning Mexican writer.

“That faculty – that of reading, that of reading ourselves – is essential to us from a collective point of view. -as a democratic society- and from an individual point of view: for the ethical and moral fulfillment of the person, for the full exercise of the rights and freedoms inherent to citizenship. Literature is, in short, a great school of freedom“said the monarch.

On the other hand, he highlighted Celorio’s vision of the “value of education” and its “usefulness in forming critical minds, dismantling prejudices and commonplaces and moving towards a more rigorous, more nuanced knowledge of things and facts.”

“A knowledge that – without being perfect, because it never is – comes as close as possible to that shared search that Machado spoke of: ‘Your truth? No, the truth. And come with me to look for her’“, noted the King.

The event, which brings together authorities, academics, editors and prominent figures from the cultural world, is the prelude to the ceremony that Felipe VI and Letizia will preside over and which will take place this Thursday, April 23 in the Auditorium of the University of Alcalá.

In his speech before lunch, Felipe VI recalled the Spaniards who went into exile in Mexico during the civil war and subsequent Francoism, who are recurring protagonists in Celorio’s work.

“Celorio recognizes and celebrates, in light of his personal experience, the contribution to Mexican culture of Spanish intellectuals in exile.. With the gratitude of a disciple he speaks to us about those teachers who, despite the distance and uprooting, continued to feel that Spain was their own,” said Felipe VI.

Thus, the monarch has highlighted Celorio’s dedication to the Spanish language throughout his life “in almost every possible facet”: as a narrator, teacher, academic, essayist and editor.

“A language that flows in an immense space, from North America to Patagonia, from the Mediterranean to the Pacific, and that already has 630 million speakers. This great mirror of our language – a mirror with the soul of a kaleidoscope, as in Borges’ stories – opens us to infinite opportunities for knowledge and creation. It produces an imaginary that does not exclude, that does not separate, that does not inhibit difference, but the other way around: that includes and magnifies us all.“, noted the King.

In addition, he has paid tribute to Jorge Luis Borges, whose death in Geneva marks 40 years, and the tribute that Celorio paid to him in his memoir, ‘That pile of broken mirrors’.

Last November, Celorio was awarded the most prestigious award for literature in Spanish for “the exceptional literary work and intellectual work with which he has contributed in a profound and sustained way to the enrichment of the Hispanic language and culture“, according to the jury’s ruling at that time.

SEVENTH AWARD-WINNING MEXICAN WRITER

Since this award was given for the first time in 1976 to Jorge Guillén, Celorio is the seventh Mexican writer to receive the award after Octavio Paz (1981), Carlos Fuentes (1987), Sergio Pitol (2005), José Emilio Pacheco (2009), Elena Poniatowska (2013) and Fernando del Paso (2015).

Among the hundred personalities from the world of letters who attended the lunch with the monarchs is the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun; the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso; the director of the Royal Spanish Academy, Santiago Muñoz Machado; the director of the Royal Academy of History, Carmen Iglesias Cano.

Also writers such as Juan Manuel Bonet, Carme Riera, María Dueñas, Marta Jiménez, Soledad Puértolas, Javier Cercas Alfonso J. Ussía, Pablo Rivero, Rafael Tarradas, Luz Gabás, Pablo Álvarez, Luis Mateo or Juan del Val.

In addition, they range from cultural promoters such as a small bookstore in Salamanca such as ‘Letras Corsarias’, to young writers such as the National Young Poetry Prize ‘Miguel Hernández’ 2025, Elisa Fernández Guzmán; or work like that of the young Segovian publishing house ‘La Uña Rota’.

The winners of two previous editions of the Cervantes Prize, Luis Mateo Díez (2023) and the Nicaraguan Sergio Ramírez (2017), have also attended.