She is the first woman to receive the award for a work written in Galician “As Alumnas”, “a tribute to the secular, free and advanced school”.
MADRID, 1 September (EUROPA PRESS) –
The winner of the 2023 National Prize for Dramatic Literature, Paula Carballeira, is the first woman to receive this award for writing a play in Galician, entitled “As alumnas”, dedicated to all teachers and the “secular, free and advanced pedagogy” pays homage,” according to the jury of the prize awarded by the Ministry of Culture.
“There is still a lot to be done, especially in the area of affective and sexual education, which ultimately is education,” he told Europa Press after the award was announced.
In addition, he warned that in Spain “little attention and little value is given” to education, although it is “an essential key at all levels”.
“In Spain we pay little attention to education in general and its impact on society. I think it is an essential key on all levels. Without education there is no culture, without education there is no industry, there is no progress, there is nothing, I think that in general we pay little attention and value it,” he assured.
In this sense, he detailed that teachers play a “fundamental role” because “all people have the memory of a teacher who teaches them about the world in a different way and who gives them opportunities.” “I think that to teachers or any person dedicated to teaching, they have a fundamental role which is to teach us to think. If that doesn’t happen, we won’t move forward,” he said.
The jury also awarded the prize to the winner for “the recovery of a woman who is a reference for Galician education, a symbol of the modern, egalitarian and transformative education proposed by the Second Republic”.
“I think there’s still a long way to go, but we’re working on it. Nevertheless, we must always be careful not to lose what we have achieved,” he defended.
“It is a wealth to teach in several languages”
Carballeira affirmed that it is “a wealth to teach in several languages” and “wonderful to have different languages in one state”. “I think it would be great, in my case, to have knowledge of Basque or Catalan, for example, and of course Galician as well. I belong to a generation that is taught in Galician, but the generation before me didn’t exist.” Galician and it’s poverty. The more languages we learn and the more languages we live with, the better. It would be important to establish education in all the languages that we know, and even more so if they are the languages of the state to which we belong,” he reflected.
For this reason, he has announced that he will translate his Galician work into Spanish “so that it can reach more people”. “If I could do it in other languages, I would do it too. I would love to reach as many readers as possible,” he explained.
The author admitted that she felt “great emotions” upon learning that she had received the award, “which was not expected” because it means that “people in other languages are becoming visible” and that her work ” outside “Galicia is known”. “I am pleased that the theater in Galicia is doing well, we have been doing this for a long time,” he explained.
Regarding the award, he said, “It’s very interesting that dramatic literature is included.” “Theater is always a very difficult genre to categorize. It’s very interesting that there is a prize for dramatic literature, I think it’s also important that it’s visible. And in this case also for works written in other languages.” to be visible. The topic is interesting too, so I wrote it,” he explained.
He also added that a play “takes time and energy” and that “people often don’t realize how much work goes into a text”.
“We are in a country where it is very easy to forget”
The author stressed that she was most “proud” because the work had a “very clear” theme: education for women. “It is a work that is part of a real character, namely María Barbeito, a great pedagogue in the Second Republic, who began and ended a pedagogical renewal,” he explained.
“We are still not recovering everything that has been lost,” he affirmed, adding that the memory and the affirmation of memory “in a society that seems to be forgetting very quickly” stand out from his work. “The past is there, it’s interesting what we’ve won and also lost,” he said.
He explained that he wrote on this topic because “it seems that the news from Afghanistan and these countries is very far from this society”. “It reminded me of the Second Republic, when the pedagogical renewal began, which was later stopped. There were great revolutions against teachers. So it’s a tribute to all those people who wanted to defend freedom of thought,” he said.
