Álvaro Pombo received the 2024 Cervantes Prize, for his “own literary world that moves and hurts”. “The Spanish language is fun, solemn, comic, fast, poetic and native to many countries,” defended the Cantabrian writer this Wednesday, from the headquarters of the RAE – which he joined in 2004 –, where he shared his first impressions after receiving the award. which is considered the “Nobel” of Spanish literature.
“Cervantes was priceless, the second part of Don Quixote was plagiarized, he was in prison, he was a brilliant idiot,” he described the famous author, “he had nothing but talent, of grace, this kind of good humor ” The laureate, aged 85, published his latest book, The exclaustrado (Anagrama), last October, praised the role that philosophy played both in his life and in his work.
It is not for nothing that he graduated in Philosophy and Letters from the Complutense University of Madrid and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Birkbeck College in London “Every time I have the opportunity, I speaks of the color of philosophical eloquence because it is very. beautiful, he declared, I am faithful to philosophy and theology.
He also devoted a few words to irony. “It’s a literary process, Cervantin, you shouldn’t believe it,” he maintained, “it’s not a primary feeling like fury, love or hatred. is secondary.” “An older person’s feeling, because when you’re young, it’s not that you believe in it, it’s that you can really believe in it. “You have the strength, the sunlight “, he reflects, “when you reach deepest old age, the irony lies in where you have arrived, where we have all arrived.”
The next thing he has in his hands is a novel about the wars in Africa. “I feel like I’ve never taken fiction or history seriously,” he confessed, “in this book I feel like, in a way, The story is not well sewn.” Furthermore, he said: “Each of us is the result of a historical circumstance. »
“I will spend the 125,000 euros sparingly”
The Cervantes Prize is worth 125,000 euros, an amount on which he commented: “I won’t say that I’m going to save it, but I’m going to spend it sparingly. “They were very good to me.” “The money goes into the cards, into the fish, into the place. Not in vices. Not at parties, well maybe there; but for modest people like me, the money is no longer there,” he admitted, not without irony, with a smile. “Money makes fun of me because I never had much,” he added before admitting that in reality, he “didn’t have much either.”
The award-winning writer complained that when he was little his mother told him that when he grew up he would be a “rut”. “That’s not true. This is not the case, it is because it does not reach us in a month. My parents and grandparents don’t understand the modern world. The money is not enough and I hope that these 125,000 euros will help me because it is the last thing that I am going to get back a little solid”, he said. At the same time, he emphasized that fortune is a “very important and clearly Castilian subject, for nobles and peasants”.
Álvaro Pombo shared the first details of the speech of gratitude that he will give when receiving the award, during the ceremony that will take place on April 23 at the Auditorium of the University of Alcalá de Henares. He will refer to Mr. Vidriera, one of the Exemplary novels of Cervantes. “He said there is no story in this book of stories that is not exemplary, that we cannot learn a moral or spiritual lesson from,” he described.
