Delibes manuscript with the speech for the Cervantes Prize comes to light

Miguel Delibes wrote in a ring binder with picture sheets: “Here I am, in this historic city of Alcalá de Henares, trying to say my last word a few words, three hundred and seventy-eight years after Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, born in it, he discreetly said the last of his before becoming silent forever.

Forever?

The simple fact that we are meeting here today, in this prestigious University, to honor his memory, proves the opposite, this is that Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra has not been muted, that his word lives on through the ages of time, of in accordance with the yearning for immortality that moves the hand and the heart of the artist ”.

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They were the first sentences, written in blue ink in very tight handwriting, including studs, of the speech he gave on Monday, April 25, 1994, at the Auditorium of the University of Alcalá de Henares, on the occasion of the 1993 Cervantes Prize, and which he titled

.

These erasures to change some words, and some others added, are on the four pages, not seen publicly until now, that the Miguel Delibes Foundation, from where they come for the first time, has deposited this Friday in the Box of Letters number 1,683 of the Instituto Cervantes, through its president, Elisa Delibes de Castro, daughter of the author.

These are only a few pages of the 15,000 documents that the Foundation has digitized and that are available to researchers.

Elisa Delibes recalled that, like those sheets, her father "wrote all his work by hand."

The Cervantes Prize was the culmination of a career in which he was also awarded the Nadal (1948), the Critics Prize (1953), the Prince of Asturias (1982) and the Nacional de las Letras Españolas (1991).

That speech in Alcalá de Henares, for which seconds before speaking, Delibes adjusted his glasses and drank a sip of water, had as a central idea “that he had lived through his characters and that these, in turn, they had taken something away from theirs ”, the managing director of the Miguel Delibes Foundation, Fernando Zamácola, told EL PAÍS.

Those characters to whom he had dedicated so many hours, "were also him, like Daniel

, the boy who was the protagonist of

"which was a transcript of his childhood

"

"That's why Delibes was reluctant in interviews to talk about him, his characters already did."

Anyone who wants to enjoy the prose that Delibes read that day can do so in the book

(Destiny), a compilation of his speeches

Zamácola pointed out that, precisely, one of the next objectives of the foundation is to gather in one volume all the speeches of Delibes, from the one he gave when they made him the favorite son of Valladolid, to the most important ones, such as the acceptance of Cervantes.

This legacy

of Delibes (Valladolid, 1920-2010), attended by five of his seven children, among other relatives, comes just on the day that marks the 11th anniversary of his death, and in the wake of his centenary, celebrated , when it could, in 2020 and which is expected to end in June of this year.

However, due to what the pandemic has prevented, Zamácola declared that they have requested the Ministry of Culture to extend the acts until the end of 2021.

Minutes earlier, Elisa Delibes de Castro had introduced into a box in the old vault of what was a bank, an orange box with the pages, protected by plastic and tied with a cord.

They will be there for the next 10 years, along with other legacies of figures from Hispanic culture: writers, artists, scientists ... "He found out about this Caja de las Letras in 2007 [when it opened] because the then director sent him a letter. from Cervantes, César Antonio Molina, in which he asked for a legacy for this institution ”, said Elisa Delibes.

However, "he thought that what he had not wanted to say in life, he would not say once he died, when that legacy was opened years later, so he rejected the offer."

The director of Cervantes, Luis García Montero, referred to Delibes as "an international reference of Spanish culture, as a novelist and as a journalist, who advanced current debates, such as that of rural Spain or respect for nature."

While the general director of the book, María José Gálvez, recalled the author of

with a phrase of his: "Fulfilling what we consider our duty is also a reward."