Carmen Martín Gaite and José Ángel Valente Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 1988

The members of the Jury for the 1988 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters, Carlos Luis Álvarez, Luis María Ansón, Manuel Arce, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, Rafael Conte Oroz, Miguel García Posada, Soledad Puértolas, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester and Antonio Vilanova, gathered in Oviedo on the 11th and 12th of April, 1988, under the presidency of Rafael Lapesa and with Emilio Alarcos Llorach acting as secretary, have decided unanimously to grant this award to Carmen Martín Gaite and José Angel Valente Docasar.

To Carmen Martín Gaite for her extensive career and recognized merits in the field of contemporary Spanish narrative, within which both she and her work have built a bridge between mid-century realism and the intimacy of the contemporary novel, while paying special attention to the problems of Spanish women of all times.

To José Ángel Valente because his poetry, continually evolving from its initial existential beat to subsequent phenomenological inquiry, is a deep interrogation into the meaning of the world, captured in dense, symbolic language of disturbing beauty, which has made him into one of the finest contemporary Spanish lyricists.

Oviedo, 12th April 1988