This Thursday, the Kings preside over the presentation of the Cervantes Prize to Gonzalo Celorio, who will talk about the humor of ‘Don Quixote’

This Thursday, April 23, the Kings will preside over the delivery of the Cervantes Prize 2025which the Mexican writer will collect Gonzalo Celorioprotagonist of the main event of Cervantes Week, in the Auditorium of the University of Alcalá.

This Wednesday, the author attended the traditional annual lunch with representatives of the world of letters at the Royal Palace offered by the monarchs.

In his speech, Celorio will talk about ‘Don Quixote’ and the “sense of humor” that exists both in the work and in Cervantes. “I would like to see a portrait in which (Cervantes) was laughing because his sense of humor is extraordinary and we always see him solemn“he explained on Monday.

The event will take place on Thursday, April 23 and will feature the participation of the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun. Both Felipe VI and Celorio and the person in charge of Culture will participate. ‘Cervantine Week’ It began this Monday, April 20, with a meeting with the author.

At this meeting, Celorio resumed the relationship between Spain and Mexico, ensuring that the “request for forgiveness” initiated by the previous president of the North American country, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is “nonsense,” defending Spanish as the language of independence and not of the Conquest.

“I maintain that the Spanish language in Latin America is not so much the language of conquest, but it is obviously the language of independence. If we had not had this Spanish language, we simply would not have been able to form our respective nationalities. “Mexico, if there is no Spanish language, would not be Mexico,” he noted this Monday.

For his part, at the lunch offered by the kings, Felipe VI paid tribute to the writer, defending that “literature is a great school of freedom“In addition, he has remembered the Spaniards exiled to Mexico, protagonists in Celorio’s work.

Thus, the award ceremony takes place against the backdrop of the relationship between Spain and Mexico and its evolution since the demand for an apology from the previous president of the North American country, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

This concession of Cervantes Prize is celebrated every year on April 23coinciding 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 coronavirus pandemic. 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 progress since 1976 – was not celebrated on April 23.

In the last edition of the award, which went to Álvaro Pombo, the Leonese writer attended the traditional annual lunch with representatives of the world of letters at the Royal Palace offered by the Kings for his “delicate” health situation and during the presentation in Alcalá, he delegated the reading of the collection speech that focused on ‘El solicitor Vidriera’.

Last November, the jury of the Spanish Literature Prize ‘Miguel de Cervantes’, corresponding to 2025, chose the writer Gonzalo Celorio 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 Cervantes jury has awarded the award to the writer for his “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.”

“Builder of an invaluable legacy that honors the Spanish language and keeps it alive in its highest form: that of the word that thinks, feels and endures.“said the ruling made public last November.

Likewise, the jury highlights his “figure as an integral writer, creator, teacher and passionate reader”, ensuring that his work is “a memory of modern Mexico and a mirror of the human condition.”

The ruling was announced by Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun, who praised Celorio for his “elegant” literary voice. “Over more than five decades he has consolidated a literary voice of notable elegance and reflective tone. in which he combines critical lucidity with a sensitivity that improves the nuances of identity, sentimental education and loss,” he stated.

WHEN THE CONQUEST HAPPENED “SPAIN WAS NOT YET SPAIN”

After hearing the ruling, Celorio defended that Spain’s “conquest” of Mexico was “violent” but pointed out that at that time Spain “was not yet Spain.”

“If we play in the ideological, cultural, political context of the 16th century, we are going to notice that this violence, in some way, was more or less pertinent at that time. That’s why a Spanish poet, if I remember correctly whose last name is Quintana, said: ‘crimes were of the time,'” he explained in a telematic conference from Mexico.

The context of his words was framed a week after the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, stated that her government continues to wait for Spain’s forgiveness for the colonial past and that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, assured that there has been “pain and injustice towards indigenous peoples” of the country.

The most recent of these demonstrations was on March 17, when King Felipe VI recognized that there was “a lot of abuse” during the Conquest despite the Indian Laws adopted by the Catholic Monarchs to protect the indigenous population, admitting that those behaviors seen from the current perspective and values ​​are not something to feel “proud of.”

Gonzalo Celorio (Mexico City, 1948) is a narrator, essayist, chronicler and one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Mexican literature.

Doctor in Hispanic Language and Literatures, specialized in Hispanic American Literature from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), he has developed extensive academic and teaching work. Since 1974, he has taught classes at various institutions, including the Universidad Iberoamericana, the National Polytechnic Institute and El Colegio de México.

He has held numerous academic and cultural positions, such as academic secretary and director of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM (1998-2000); director of Literature of the National Institute of Fine Arts; coordinator of Cultural Diffusion of UNAM (1989-1998); and general director of the Economic Culture Fund (2000-2002).

He is currently a professor of Latin American literature at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM, where he directs the extraordinary chair ‘Masters of Spanish Exile’. He is a full member of the Mexican Academy of Language, of which he is its director, and also a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy and the Cuban Academy of Language.

Among his most recognized works are the novels ‘Love of Yourself’, ‘The Sedentary Journey’, ‘And the Earth Shakes in its Centers’, ‘El Metal y la Escoria’ and ‘Liars of Memory’, as well as the essays ‘The Underlines Are Mine’ and ‘Subversive Canons’.

His work, characterized by erudition, stylistic rigor and reflection on memory, identity and the Latin American literary tradition, places him among the most relevant authors of current Mexican literature.