Rafael Cadenas, a moral figure from Venezuela who fights with the beauty of his verses

• Prize The poet Rafael Cadenas, witness to the dignity of Venezuela, wins the 2022 Cervantes Prize

• Opinion of Antonio Lucas Rafael Cadenas, chanted poems against Chavismo

• Interview Rafael Cadenas: "Poetry must stir"

• Opinion of Raúl Rivero, in 2015 This is no longer Venezuela

"We flourish in an abyss"

, read in 2018 the banner that welcomed the poet at the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), in Caracas.

The students wanted to celebrate

with one of his own poems, a leitmotif of struggle and survival in the cradle of so many rebels.

Four years later, in a country where there is nothing to celebrate, many have done so today by reciting the necessary verses of the humble poet, as they have been doing for years.

and that were chanted and rewritten so many times when one failure after another was added in the fight against Chavismo.

The same country in which many others have chosen to accommodate themselves in the face of what seems to be their fatal destiny, the critical and pessimistic voice of the new Cervantes Prize winner,

, has remained unshakable, turned into a refuge where propaganda and repression do not exist.

Faced with so much pain and heartbreak, those who fought and continue to do so found consolation in the territory of the verses and the incorruptible words of the great poet, always democratic, always anti-revolutionary.

As he wrote in one of his poems, "

, above it, in the cleft, this country seeks its true face to heal itself."

Poetry charged with the future is a "thumbs up for a thoughtful, educated, refined, profound, sensible Venezuela. This country is today on the fringes of all this," confirms analyst Luis Salamanca, who stresses that Cadenas is not the leading

pamphleteer

raised to the wind, "but a figure that transmits spirit, a feeling of freedom, that pushes the fight with the delicacy and elegance of his verses".

"The meaning of this award for Venezuela? The first thing is that for literature, which is the highest expression of freedom, it means a well-deserved recognition. I want to emphasize that Cadenas is, first and foremost, a man of letters and one of the greatest living poets in Spanish. And furthermore, or better for that very reason, he has been a moral figure of great significance in the face of the criminals who have destroyed Venezuela. The award, of course, also recognizes this struggle", underlines the writer Juan Carlos Chirinos .

"A moment separate from all moments has years waiting for you out of years," Cadenas versed.

Where better than at the University of Salamanca, so many years after Miguel de Unamuno, to vindicate freedom and democracy during the delivery of the Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry.

," scolded the poet, before delving into the importance of language for politics.

A normality so far removed today from the "normalization" orchestrated by Nicolás Maduro and his allies for his return through the front door to the international community.

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