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´The most important thing is to help understand the world´, said the prizewinner.
Spanish writer Luis Goytisolo receives the Carlos Fuentes International Prize from President Enrique Peña Nieto
November 01, 2018Spanish writer Luis Goytisolo Gay (Barcelona, Spain, March 17, 1935) received the Carlos Fuentes International Prize for Literary Creation in the Spanish Language in a ceremony headed by the President of the Republic, Enrique Peña Nieto, on Thursday, November 1 in the Adolfo López Mateos Hall of the Official Residence Los Pinos.
The head of the Mexican Executive said that the award given by the Government of the Republic, through the Department of Culture, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM, for its acronym in Spanish) is the most important literary distinction that Mexico offers to Spanish-speaking writers.
Regarding the author, Enrique Peña Nieto said he has a brilliant literary career and has enriched our language with the mastery of his stories, essays and novels, and is just in this last genre in which he has written with enormous talent thousands of pages essential to Hispanic American literature, which renewed the content and form of the traditional novel.
He stood out that throughout his administration, the Government of the Republic assumed with conviction and responsibility the promotion of the talent of Mexican creators and artists through scholarships, creation promotion programs and the development of millions of cultural activities to give continuity to the great literary and artistic tradition of our country.
President of the Republic added that the creation of the Department of Culture symbolizes the relevance that has been given to art and culture in this government.
Secretary of Culture, María Cristina García Cepeda, said that reading Luis Goytisolo is to enjoy and thank a work in which the fascination for beauty and the lucid look before the crudity of the world coexist.
“Luis Goytisolo receives today the prize that bears the name of Carlos Fuentes; two authors of works related by the surprise, the social and political changes of their moment and circumstance, by the great and renewed humanist speeches, the intelligence and the imagination”, said the head of Culture.
She considered that this recognition of his word and the works that make up the literary heritage of the Hispanic world, reaffirms the commitment of Mexico and its institutions, which honors culture as a priority on the political agenda of our country.
According to the President of the Award Jury, Jaime Labastida Ochoa, Luis Goytisolo "is an unusual narrator in the space of contemporary narrative. He has an explicit theory different from what is understood by novel or narration. The act of writing for him is a process of knowledge”.
For the director of the National Language Academy of Mexico, since we are the nation with the largest number of speakers in the world and in the American Continent there is 92 percent of Spanish speakers, it was necessary for our country to create this award of international rank.
He recalled that the prize has been won in its first three editions by the Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa; the Nicaraguan author, Sergio Ramírez; the Mexican poet, Eduardo Lizalde; and now, the Spanish narrator.
During his speech, writer Luis Goytisolo said that the novel survives and will survive because it has its public and there are people who read: "Without going any further the celebration of the present act proves it”.
The author recalled his first meeting with Carlos Fuentes in Barcelona and the way in which years later the Mexican writer organized in our country, in connection with Max Aub and other Spanish exiles, an international campaign for his release when he was imprisoned by Francisco Franco’s regime in Madrid's Carabanchel prison.
Luis Goytisolo said that for any true novelist what counts is not the story, but the ability of the text to involve the reader in its content. "That is to say, that the readers feel personally affected by the story, that what is read helps them to understand the world better, and when they understand the world better, they end up understanding themselves better".
The author of works such as Las afueras, Estela de fuego que se aleja, La paradadoja del ave migratoria, Estatuas con palomas, Escalera hacia el cielo, also approached the city of Barcelona as the epicenter of the great renovation of the Spanish novel in the 60’s and 70´s of the last century and the changes in the literary scene.
The distinguished guests at the award ceremony for the Carlos Fuentes International Prize for Literary Creation in the Spanish Language were: Spanish novelist Luis Goytisolo Gay, the President of the Republic, Enrique Peña Nieto; the Secretary of Culture, María Cristina García Cepeda; Silvia Lemus, Carlos Fuentes' widow; Enrique Graue Wiechers, rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico; Jaime Labastida Ochoa, director of the Mexican Academy of Language and president of the jury of the award; Jorge Gutiérrez Vázquez, deputy director of Cultural Diversity and Promotion of Reading of the Department of Culture.
Enrique Graue Wiechers, rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), thought that the prize was created to recognize women and men whose pens have contributed to enriching, consolidating and diversifying the literary heritage in Spanish.
He pointed out that the prizewinner shares with writer Carlos Fuentes the commitment from a plurality of perspectives with the permanent transformation to literature.
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