Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry

The Queen Sofía Award for Ibero-American Poetry, considered one of the most important in the world, is signed within the Framework Agreement for Cultural Cooperation between the University of Salamanca and National Heritage. The award is endowed with 42,000 euros and its purpose is to reward the poetic work of a living author who, due to its literary value, constitutes a relevant contribution to the common cultural heritage of Latin America and Spain. It bears the name of her Majesty Queen Doña Sofía for the literary sensitivity that her sovereign has always shown and her desire to want to recognize the difficult and sublime writing that poetry is. Given the prestige that the Award has achieved over time, the financial award is symbolic and the literary one very high, due to its social and media projection and the dissemination implications for each winner. In addition, it is not only a maximum recognition of a specific pen but also the poetic expression of one of the three great current planetary languages, Spanish, along with English and Chinese, with a constant growth of speakers thanks to its use by the population. american. It is not surprising, therefore, that it is the University of Salamanca, of special historical significance in the Hispanic-American sphere, and National Heritage, a State agency that manages the original assets of the Royal House, today in use by the same but of the Spanish people, who orchestrate an award that has reached a great international dimension.

The recognition of Ibero-American poetry and its currents

On the other hand, the evolution of Ibero-American poetry in its different currents is recognized through prominent representatives of them. Thus, from the post-avant-garde poetry to the so-called post-poetry, going through the poetic surrealism of Gonzalo Rojas, the colloquial poetics of Mario Benedetti, the poetry of knowledge, the social, the poetic neo-baroque and other currents. In those relating to the Peninsula, it is taken from the famous anthology by José María Castellet, Nine new Spanish poets, from 1970, which included some of the winners, such as Pere Gimferrer. It was a culturalist poetry that was linked to the much earlier avant-garde surrealism, that of before the Spanish Civil War. Other currents were social realism, metapoetry, Byzantinist romanticism, poetic damning, humanized intimacy, poetry of experience, transcendentalism and others, cultivated in one way or another by the Spanish winners. The anthology of Luis Antonio de Villena, jury for the awards, with his Postnovísimos, in 1986, marked another turning point, recovering decadence, the epic and continuing previous trends. Villena made another anthology in 1992, Fin de siglo, where the Castilian poetic tradition was reflected, and, in 1999, the Visor publishing house published an overview, The last third of the century (1968-1998).. Consulted anthology of Spanish poetry. Many of the award-winning Spanish poets have drawn from the currents collected in these anthologies.

Almost half of the winners are indeed Spanish -see the list below-, followed by three Chileans, two Nicaraguans, two Portuguese and two Uruguayans and the rest, with one each, are from Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela and Cuba. There are six women awarded, from Cuba, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay, Peru and Claribel Alegría, who had dual Nicaraguan and Salvadoran nationality. No poet from Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica or Bolivia has yet been awarded.

Decision of the XXIII Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry

The winner of the 2014 Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry has been the Malaga-born poet María Victoria Atencia, who belongs to the so-called generation of the 50s. This recognition, according to the members of the jury, is due to her extensive and outstanding production poetic, of which "its great formal perfection" stands out.

Reward Skins

The candidates are presented by the Language Academies of the Ibero-American countries, the Royal Spanish Academy and the university departments of Hispanic Philology, Philosophy and Literature - the bases can be consulted on the Internet -. The winner is designated within the month of June and the cash prize is delivered in November. The Spanish and Ibero-American award-winners usually alternate, although there have been consecutive years of Spanish or American award-winners, including Brazilians and Portuguese due to the Ibero-American dimension of the Award, not only Spanish-American. The jury is made up of a select group of academics and writers in the Spanish language of indisputable international prestige, which does not reach twenty. At the University of Salamanca itself, study days are held for authors who have already won prizes, to delve into the significance of these poets.

The Reina Sofía family's art bindings, in the Royal Library

Among the actions of National Heritage in relation to the Award, is that of binding a copy of the winning work each year. The binding work must be a reflection of the most current Spanish trends in design and execution within an artistic concept in line with the rich binding collections kept in the Royal Library. It is intended that for future generations there will be a material testimony of the artistic binding that has been carried out in Spain since 1992, giving way to the evolution of binding interrupted in its palatal exhibitions in 1931. It is thus an example of the creation of contemporary Spanish binding art heritage, representative to the highest degree. All the bindings must have the singularity of showing the real number of Doña Sofía, an "S". Sometimes it is easily distinguishable, other times it blends in with the artistic decoration of the piece and is not easy to appreciate, but they all contain it, it is a sine qua non condition that it is displayed. As it is an ongoing collection, the evolution of ligatory art in Spain since 1992, its first year, can be appreciated very clearly.

Background

The palatine deposit is the main center in Spain in terms of quality of pieces in this regard, from the 18th century inclusive until the end of the reign of Alfonso XIII. Chamber bookbinders and other teachers, also very prominent, are present in the Royal Library through notable samples of their work, the most sublime because it was for the use and enjoyment of the Kings of Spain. For this reason, it was decided at the beginning of the nineties, when the prestigious journey of these awards began, to continue the incorporation of bindings that would bear witness to a specific moment of artistic conception through certain materials and techniques.

This continues a wide collection of royal female bindings guarded by National Heritage and whose possession mark is frequently heraldic or onomastic but also with a royal figure, a mark used for the Reina Sofía Awards, whose context and background is this collection of Heritage. In it there are specimens from the fifteenth century, with some of Queen Isabel La Católica, going through numerous examples of María Luisa de Parma, María Amalia de Saxony, María Cristina de Borbón-Dos Sicilies, Isabel II, María Cristina de Habsburgo-Lorena or Queen Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg, many of them in fact with a personal figure. All these queens have outstanding examples of bindings not only worked on different skins but also on textile support. The bindings of Marie Julie Clary, wife of José I, are not very well known, but they are generally all notable, both the heraldic ones and the ones with real figures, being curious that despite not stepping foot in the Madrid court, the best artisans executed for her. In addition to the already existing funds, the palatine collection of royal female bindings has increased in recent years, it is worth remembering a heraldry of Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII of France, already widowed as she wears the Franciscan cord knotted with the separate tassels (in RB, II/4572) or a set, which makes a pair, of a ligature of María Amalia de Sajonia (in RB, XIX/10777) with another of her husband, Carlos III, both of Italian execution. The royal female bindings are found, in some of their most notable samples, collected and described both in the IBIS database of the Royal Library and in the historical-artistic binding database, included in the preceding one and which is found next to to a website about Chamber bookbinders.

The Royal Library is located at the Royal Palace of Madrid.

Master bookbinders of the Reina Sofía family

This historical trajectory precedes the artistic bindings of the Reina Sofía, commissioned biannually to artisans in each corresponding year (see RB, XIV/2938 and ss.). In 1992/93 they wanted to testify to the work and concept of the most renowned master alive at the time, Antolín Palomino Olalla, after the death of Emilio Brugalla. In these twenty years, the brothers Antonio and José Galván from Cádiz followed, also classics of aesthetic idea, but later others more contemporary in expression, technique and use of materials, such as Andrés Pérez-Sierra, Juan Antonio Fernández Argenta or Dolores Baldó. Some of them are bookbinding prizes from the Ministry of Culture and all have a professional evolution of recognition. On the website of the Royal Library you can find condensed the trajectory of each artist binder, who performs the work of two different award-winning poets, as it is commissioned biannually. The curricular list of each one is preceded by an article by the Director of the Royal Library María Luisa López-Vidriero, clarifying the new continuity of the collection of royal female ligatures and its need in current times.

Old bindings.

Laureates of the Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry

Year	Author	Work	Nationality
1992	Gonzalo Rojas	Five visions	ChileChile
1993	Claudio	Towards chanting	SpainSpain
1994	João Cabral de Melo Neto	To the measure of the hand	BrazilBrazil
1995	José Hierro	Own names	SpainSpain
1996	Angel González	Light, or fire, or life	SpainSpain
1997	Álvaro Mutis	Summa de Maqroll el Gaviero: poetry 1948-1997	ColombiaColombia
1998	José Ángel Valente	High and light flight	SpainSpain
1999	Mario Benedetti	The mirrors the shadows	Uruguay Uruguay
2000	Pere Gimferrer	Solar seas, lunar tide	SpainSpain
2001	Nicanor Parra	blank pages	ChileChile
2002	José Antonio Muñoz Rojas	I can only name you.	SpainSpain
2003	Sophia de Mello Breyner	In the nakedness of light	Portugal
2004	José Manuel Caballero Bonald	Years and books	SpainSpain
2005	Juan Gelman	Fiery job	Argentina
2006	Antonio Gamoneda	Black syllables	SpainSpain
2007	Blanca Varela	Although it's the night	Peru Peru
2008	Pablo García Baena	Faithful branch	SpainSpain
2009	José Emilio Pacheco	Contraelegía	Mexico Mexico
2010	Francisco Brines	To burn the night	SpainSpain
2011	Fina García Marruz	What, silence, are you silent?	CubaCuba
2012	Ernesto Cardenal	Hydrogen in love	NicaraguaNicaragua
2013	Nuno Júdice	Syllables devastation	Portugal
2014	Maria Victoria Attitude	The fruit of my voice	SpainSpain
2015	Ida Vitale	Everything suddenly is nothing	Uruguay Uruguay
2016	Antonio Colinas	Lumen	SpainSpain
2017	Claribel Joy	Though it lasts for a moment	NicaraguaNicaragua / El SalvadorEl Salvador
2018	Rafael Cadenas	It's not my face.	Venezuela Venezuela
2019	Joan Margarit	Journey to the shadow	SpainSpain
2020	Raúl Zurita	You will see auroras like blood	ChileChile
2021	Ana Luísa Amaral	The most perfect excess	Portugal
2022	Olvido García Valdés		SpainSpain

Award by country

SpainSpain	14
ChileChile	3
Portugal	3
NicaraguaNicaragua	2
Uruguay Uruguay	2
Argentina	1
BrazilBrazil	1
CubaCuba	1
El SalvadorEl Salvador	1
ColombiaColombia	1
Mexico Mexico	1
Peru Peru	1
Venezuela Venezuela	1
Total	30