Padura stands before the Princess of Asturias with Cuba and carrying his language on his back
Writer Leonardo Padura was awarded on October 23 by the King of Spain the Princess of Asturias Prize for Literature during a ceremony in the city of Oviedo. Following is the complete text of the speech given by Padura when receiving the prize.
BELONGING AND GRATITUDE
Their Majesties, prize-winners, ladies and gentlemen:
Here I am, and I come from Cuba. However, more than from Cuba, I must specify that I come from a barrio on the outskirts of Havana called Mantilla. There is where I live and write, in the very house where I was born. My father, grandfather, perhaps even my great-great-grandfather were also born in this plebeian and busy barrio that flourished by the highway. There is where my father met my mother, a beautiful girl from Cienfuegos who forced by poverty came to Havana, and he fell in love with her until the last breath of his life. My maternal grandparents had been born in that zone in the centre of the island and, if there was no exception, it also seems that my great grandparents Fuentes and Castellanos were born in that area. If I say all this it is to establish the depth of a belonging and also of genealogical evidence: I am Cuban to the core.
