King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain presided over the lunch hosted for the winners of the Miguel de Cervantes Award 2021 at the Royal Palace of Zarzuela in Madrid. The winner of the 2021 award is Uruguay author Cristina Peri Rossi for her creative work with Spanish and Latin American writers. The award ceremony will take place on Friday at the University of Alcalá.
Endowed with 125,000 euros, the Miguel de Cervantes Award is given to a writer who, with their work as a whole, has contributed to enriching the Hispanic literary legacy. The Cervantes Prize can be awarded to any author whose literary work is written entirely, or in essential part, in Spanish. The candidates for the Prize can be presented by the Academies of the Spanish Language, the authors awarded in previous calls, the institutions that, due to their nature, purposes, or contents, are linked to literature in the Spanish language, and the members of the Jury.
The Jury of the award is presided by the José Manuel Sánchez Ron, appointed by the Royal Spanish Academy and many other renowned personalities of the literacy world. The annual award ceremony will bring together authorities, academics, editors, critics, teachers, booksellers, and writers, in tribute to the winner of the 2021 edition, the writer Cristina Peri Rossi who graduated in Comparative Literature.
Cristina published her first book in 1963 and obtained the most important prizes in Uruguay. Due to the political movements in her home country, she moved to Barcelona in 1972, where she began her activity against the Uruguayan dictatorship, writing on the pages of the mythical Triunfo magazine, and eventually became a Spanish citizen. She has been a professor of literature, translator, and journalist, and is a regular lecturer at Spanish and foreign universities.
King Felipe and Queen Letizia received the Christina Rossi at the Royal Palace along with the Jury of the award, and nearly a hundred people including authorities, academics, publishers, and writers. King Felipe addressed the gathering and said “faithful to the Cervantes spirit, this lunch brings together academics, writers, critics, philologists, editors, cultural journalists, booksellers, literary agents, and those of you who work, with different tasks and from different perspectives, so that our common language may be an instrument of dialogue and understanding between brother peoples from all over the world; so that it illuminates new spaces of knowledge and broaden its horizon, always attached to the town that owns it. ‘Language of encounters’, as Carlos Fuentes used to say”.
Moving towards Queen Letizia style – Letizia brought back her Pertegaz Embroidered Dress that she first wore in October 2019 during the Princess of Asturias award weekend.
The high neck grey dress from the label’ Autumn-winter 2019 ready-to-wear collection features long voluminous sleeves, a pussy-bow high-neckline, and embroidery on the front of the bodice in red, mustard, white and black.
Letizia paired the outfit with pink Magrit suede pumps
and a matching handbag.
The Queen teamed up the look with her diamond and Citrine earrings that remains unidentified and
her Karen Hallam ring.