4
O
viedo
| C
ampoamor
T
heatre
| 18
th
O
ctober
1991
Its heroic nigh-on century-long defence of Spanish was not simply a feat of our intellectuals, our
politicians and our writers. The decisive resistance was made by the people, by the simple, humble
folk of Puerto Rico. Resistance was spawned in the San Juan quarter, in the rocky outcrops of Cabo
Rojo, in the sugar-cane plantations of my native town of Ponce, on the beaches of Luquillo, in
the mountains of Utuado, by the humble peasants who learnt their prayers, their ten-line stanzas
and their ballads in Spanish. Resistence was born of this people and nation, which treasures the
Castilian vocabulary used to describe their lives in hidden corners of their very being and in the
palpitation of their souls.
The people are the heroes. It is the people who have preserved the language in which God
purveyed the Gospel according to Don Quixote to Cervantes. It was the people and their heroic
resistance that enables us to belong to the language community that unites the three hundred and
forty one million people who express themselves in Spanish.
The people’s victory has enabled the works of our poets, novelists, playwrights and essayists to
be produced in the universal language that they share with Juan Ramón Jiménez, Borges, García
Márquez, Cela and Octavio Paz.
On behalf of the land of Borinquen, who took the words of its national anthem from one of the
offspring of the land that now bestows this Award upon us; on behalf of the island that this great
Asturian figure called the daughter of the sea and the sun; on behalf of the good people of Puerto
Rico, who have remained true to themselves, I thank you.
Rafael Hernández Colón,
on behalf of the People of
Puerto Rico
—
Prince of Asturias Award
for Literature
1991
Rafael Hernández Colón was
Governor of Puerto Rico in 1991. He
had first held this office from 1973
to 1977 and subsequently did so
between 1985 and 1993.
—
Excerpt from the speech given on
the occasion of receiving the Prince
of Asturias Award for Literature
on 18/10/1991.
