Madrid, Apr 24 (EFE).- The Venezuelan poet and essayist Rafael Cadenas receives this Monday the Cervantes Prize 2022, the highest award for letters in Spanish, in a ceremony presided over by the king and queen of Spain in the auditorium of the University of Alcalá from Henares (Madrid).
Personalities from culture and politics will attend the award ceremony for Rafael Cadenas, 93, the first Venezuelan writer to have been recognized with this award given annually by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, endowed with 125,000 euros.
A prize that was awarded to him for his “vast and extensive literary work”, as well as for the transcendence of a creator who has made poetry “a reason for his own existence” and has taken it “to heights of excellence”, according to the jury noted.
In addition to the Cervantes Prize that he will receive today from the king, Cadenas has to his credit the Queen Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry, the National Prize for Literature of Venezuela or the International Federico García Lorca-City of Granada Poetry Prize.
The writer, poet, essayist and teacher has combined poetry and thought throughout his career with a work that expresses desolation, calm and beauty. His most famous poem, “Defeat”, made him a symbol for many young people in the sixties and became popular in Spain and Latin America.