2
O
viedo
| C
ampoamor
T
heatre
| 22
nd
N
ovember
1986
We, Spaniards and Latin Americans have shared 300 years of common history and, in these three
centuries, the continent Columbus discovered has disappeared and been replaced by another,
substantially different one. This is a continent which, though enriched with the contents of its pre-
Spanish core and with what has come from other parts of the earth, mainly Africa, nevertheless
thinks, believes, is organized, speaks and dreams within values and cultural parameters which are
the same as Europe’s. Whoever refuses to see this has an inadequate view of America and of the
West’s cultural horizon.
After three centuries when there was but one, the nations that Spain helped to form and on
which she left an indelible mark broke up into a myriad of countries which, in the midst of fortune
and misfortune —more the latter than the former— are trying to shape for themselves a becoming
destiny and towipe out those devils that have poisoned their history. Hunger, intolerance, iniquitous
inequalities, backwardness, lack of liberty and violence, evils to which Spain is no stranger for they
have damaged her, too.
What history has united, governments often take apart. Our past, in America, is marred by
stupid quarrels, which have left us bloodstained and impoverished to no purpose. But all the
wars and dissension have not been able to penetrate deep; beneath the passing differences those
links which Spain forged between herself and us, and among ourselves, and which time goes on
strengthening remain unbreakable: a language, beliefs, institutions and a very wide gamut of
virtues and defects which, for good or evil, make us relatives above and beyond our idiosyncrasies
and differences.
Mario Vargas Llosa
—
Prince of Asturias
Award for Literature
1986
Excerpt from the speech given on
the occasion of receiving the Prince
of Asturias Award for Literature
on 22/11/1986.
Laureates. Excerpts
