Luis Mateo Díez, the great storyteller of Spanish literature, the prolific creator of the mythical rural area of Celama, won the Cervantes Prize this Tuesday, three years after receiving the National Prize for Spanish Literature. At the age of 81, he climbed the penultimate step to the highest honor in Hispanic literature, a Cervantes, confirming the teachings of the great Leonean writer. An author who describes himself as “unrealistic”, whose work, heir to an oral culture dominated by the mastery of a technique and a poetic language of exceptional richness, stands out for its uniqueness and interest in the moral dimension of man .
“This award is not mine, it would be very smug and smug to say so.” “The fate of everything I write and the challenge for which I do it lies with my readers,” said the winner in the RAE headquarters, where he offered a press conference.
“The creation of fiction, imaginary life, this parallel reality, is more important to me than reality.” “It was a path of fate and ruin and I live much more what I write than what I live,” said the prose writer.
Associated with the narrative tradition of Castilla y León, a long-time writer and holder of Chair I of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) since May 21, 2001, Luis Mateo Díez is the owner of one of the richest and most personal universes of narrative in Spanish. Author of novels, short stories, short stories, articles and other texts somewhere between memory, reflection, fiction and essay, Mateo Díez has written a work born in the heat of fire, heritage of the oral culture in which he was born and of which it registers his progressive disappearance.
The winner surprises with his “continuous and new challenges, with which he transcends a world of fantasy and acquires reality for the reader,” said the Minister of Culture, describing the qualities of the prose writer. Luis Mateo Díez was born on September 21, 1942 in Villablino, in the foggy Laciana Valley, where his father was a city official. In 1954 he moved to León with his family. Contact with the rich heritage of rural areas determined his early inclination towards the imaginary, be it oral or written.
He studied law in Oviedo and Madrid and, through a competitive examination, entered the Corps of General Administration Technicians of the Madrid City Council in 1969, where he alternated civil service and literary creation “in optimal balance” until his retirement.
With the trilogy consisting of The Spirit of the Páramo, The Ruin of Heaven and The Darkening, he created his own imaginary territory: the kingdom of Celama, a rural metaphor and “window to the deepest and greatest”. mysterious part of the human heart. An area linked to the empty Spain with an uncertain future “without destiny” and, in the opinion of this gifted mist creator “Cities of Shadow”, tending “to absolute oblivion”. Celama is for Luis Mateo, Macondo for García Márquez, Yoknapatawpha for Faulkner, Santa María for Onetti or Región for Juan Benet.
The author of “The Fountain of Age,” his best-known work, reiterates that his books “never become bestsellers,” that he challenges himself on every page and that he feels “privileged to have loyal and ambitious readers.” ; Accomplices showing their faces.
Luis Mateo Díez defines himself as a storyteller and character creator who also builds complicity with readers. According to the jury, the winner is “one of the great storytellers of the Spanish language, heir to the Cervantine spirit, writer despite all odds, creator of imaginary worlds and territories”.
“Unrealistic realism”
Díez has no plans to give up the “unrealistic realism” that characterizes his stories even as they mature. Nor does he intend to change his style in his old age, which is characterized by “competence and undeniable mastery of the language, which the author recognizes in a writing in which he masterfully mixes the educated and the popular,” says the minutes of the Jury.
His novels deal with universal themes such as memory, identity and death, recurring themes in his prose, in which “expressionistic, parodic or grotesque humor predominates and best puts events into perspective”. With these references, the author gives his writing a “clear and ambiguous perspective that allows us to examine the complexity of the human condition.”
This Cervantes, for which he has always been a clear contender, joins the long list of awards that Luis Mateo inaugurated with the Café Gijón for “Apócryfo del carnation and the thorn” (1972). Then followed the Ignacio Aldecoa for “Cenizas” (1976), the National Narrative Award twice (1987 and 2000) for “The Fountain of Age” and “The Ruin of Heaven”, as well as the Critics’ Prize and the Francisco Threshold for “The Fountain of Age” and “The Ruin of Heaven”. “The Head on Fire” (2012).
Some of his works have been made into films, such as “The Fountain of the Age”, filmed by Julio Sánchez Valdés, as well as the stories “Los grajos del sochantre” or “El filandón”.
“This award reassures me, it comforts me and carries with it a certain surprise and recognition for something that has been done for so long,” said the author, whose next book, forthcoming, is titled “Guardian of the Ruins.” It will be a commemorative work and will be illustrated by the writer’s brother, Antón Mateo Díez.
This year’s jury consisted, among others, of the two winners of previous editions, Cristina Peri Rossi and Rafael Cadenas, as well as the director of the Royal Spanish Academy, Santiago Muñoz Machado.
The Cervantes Prize, endowed with 125,000 euros, is considered the “Nobel Prize” for Spanish literature and honors the work of a writer who has enriched the Spanish language with his works. In its last five editions, the Cervantes Prize focused on poetry and went to the Venezuelan Rafael Cadenas (2022), the Uruguayans Cristina Peri Rossi (2021) and Ida Vitale (2018), and the Spaniards Francisco Brines (2020) and Joan Margaret ( 2019). The prize will be awarded on April 23rd during a ceremony in the auditorium of the University of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid).
