The Diplomat
The Instituto Cervantes celebrates from today until April 27 the Semana Cervantina 2022 (Cervantine Week 2022), which will bring together various activities in Spain and Mexico and will include a tribute in Madrid to the writer José Saramago for the centenary of his birth, in which the president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, will participate.
In this edition, in addition to the events at the Cervantes headquarters in Madrid and Alcalá de Henares, the program will reach the other side of the Atlantic with an agenda of activities in Mexico, a country to which the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, will travel. The Week also includes more than 40 activities in the network of Cervantes centers and libraries around the world.
The Cervantes Week activities will begin today with the presentation, in the Caja de las Letras at the Cervantes headquarters in Madrid, of the legacy in memoriam of the poet José García Nieto (Oviedo, 1914-Madrid, 2001), winner of the Cervantes Prize in 1996 and member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language. On Wednesday, April 20, the Cervantes headquarters in Alcalá de Henares will inaugurate the exhibition 75 Aniversario de los Premios Adonáis, a bibliographic retrospective on the longest-running poetry award in Spain. Again at the Madrid headquarters, on Thursday, April 21, El fuego apartado will be held, dedicated to the work of the six female winners of the Cervantes Prize: María Zambrano, Dulce María Loynaz, Ana María Matute, Elena Poniatowska, Ida Vitale and Cristina Peri Rossi.
Cervantes Week will extend its reach to the other side of the Atlantic with activities in Mexico, where the director of the Cervantes Institute will deliver the lecture Saving Poetry, Saving the World at the Los Pinos cultural complex in Mexico City, will collect on April 23, International Book Day, the legacy of the poet Carmen Castellote, the last survivor of the Republican exile, and will participate in the celebration of the Book and Rose Festival at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) on April 23 and 24.
On Monday, April 25, the day on which Portugal commemorates the Carnation Revolution, the Caja de las Letras will receive a legacy in memoriam from Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago (1922-2010) on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. The director of the Cervantes Institute will accompany the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and the president of the José Saramago Foundation, Pilar del Río, who will deposit the legacy. That same Monday, and in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes of Tokyo, will be held the conference of the hispanist and historian of Irish origin Ian Gibson Federico García Lorca and the gay world on the implications of homosexuality of the poet from Granada in his time and work.
The Cervantine Week program will close on Wednesday, April 27 with a joint legacy in memoriam in tribute to the writers Rafael Alberti (1902-1999) and María Teresa León (1903-1988), both belonging to the Generation of ’27. Teresa Alberti, niece of Rafael Alberti, will deposit the legacy, accompanied by García Montero and Fernando Martínez López, State Secretary for Democratic Memory.
