The writer Luis Mateo Diez (León, 1942) has received the Cervantes Prize 2023the highest award for literature in Spanish, in a ceremony presided over by the kings in the Auditorium of the University of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). An award granted every year by the Ministry of Culture and which was given to him last November for “being one of the great storytellers of the Spanish language, heir to the Cervantine spirit, writer in the face of all adversity, creator of imaginary worlds and territories. ”.

During his speech, the writer acknowledged that it was in his childhood when he came into contact with writing. “My need to write to tell the most foreign things to what happened to me, if there are notable events in childhood, it had a beneficial effect on meas if doing it with the minimum skills that one could have had a curious satisfaction,” he expressed. He also recalled the first book that marked him, Don Quixote de la Mancha, recognizing that his first stories had a quixotic air and making allusion to his characters, “I live dedicated to them, since they are the ones who save me.”

Mateo Díez is the only author awarded twice with the National Prize for Fiction and Criticisma, and which also has the National of Spanish Literature among many other recognitions. Creator of the mythical and imaginary territory of Celama that appears in several of his novels, the Leonese author has his own “style, demanding, of great originality, where expressionist, parodic or grotesque humor prevails as the best way to relativize what happens, and that entails a lucid and ambiguous perspective that allows us to verify the complexity of the human condition,” as determined by the jury.

The prize is worth 125,000 euros and is the most prestigious award in literature in Spanish. After receiving the award, the winner, who is also an academic from the RAE, will begin the XXVIII Continuous Reading of Don Quixote in the afternoon, at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid.