Thursday, 04/07/2024
The writer Sergio del Molino received today, Thursday, the medal of Santa Isabel de Portugal, the highest distinction awarded by the Provincial Council of Zaragoza. It was awarded to him by the president of the institution, Juan Antonio Sánchez Quero, in a solemn institutional ceremony in which the new Alfaguara novel prize winner claimed “respectful and intellectual curiosity regarding the lives of others.”
“There can be no literature, no public debate, no politics, no thought, and certainly no journalism, if we do not strive to understand others, no matter how different and strange they may appear to us, no matter how far removed we may be from their feelings and reasons,” said del Molino, who insisted on the need to “know what it feels like to be someone else in order to be able to speak better and be better understood.” “If there is anything in my work that is worth reading and appreciating, I owe it to my stubborn and obsessive drive to understand others. As a journalist, as a novelist and as an essayist, I have dedicated myself to nothing else,” he said.
Elaborating on this, del Molino explained that “the first mystery” he set out to clarify was his paternal grandfather’s “radical fondness” for Bubierca, the small municipality in the Community of Calatayud where he was born, from which he emigrated to Madrid and to which he returned whenever he might.
“If I am here today thanking for this medal, it is largely thanks to my grandfather,” explained the award winner. “In my effort to understand his attachment to Bubierca, I wrote one of my best books, ‘Lo que a nadie le importa’, and when I thought I understood his feeling towards the landscape, I began to write ‘La España vacía’, which is a tribute to all the Spaniards who lived discreetly and quietly, like the Jalón river as it passes through Bubierca, and whose lives seem to get lost in the circular time of eternal return. Literature has the power to rescue them, and I came to their rescue with my weapons as a writer.”
Furthermore, del Molino thanked the Provincial Council of Zaragoza for granting him the medal of Saint Elizabeth, which was approved unanimously by all political groups. “For someone of my ilk, so detached from homelands, both small and large, it is an honour as immense as it is unexpected to see himself recognised in his homeland”, he stressed. “Although I insist on feeling like a foreigner and taking distance, you have reminded me today that I am part of this land as my grandfather was in Bubierca. With the same stoic gesture and the same sly smile that we here call somarda. Therefore, allow me once once more to thank you for the compliment you give me with the greatest of gratitude”.
Regarding the figure of his grandfather, the writer has evoked him as “a man of roots, like so many Spaniards of his generation, that of rural exoduses.” “My grandfather lived almost all his life in the heart of Madrid without ever losing sight of the emptiness of his town. The two voids: those left in the countryside by the peasants who left, and the void that opened up in the souls of those peasants when they emigrated,” recalled del Molino.
“My grandfather was a man of roots, but I am not. My natural condition is to be a stranger. I feel like a foreigner and an intruder almost always. Here, now, speaking before you and receiving the generosity of the province in which I live, I also feel like a foreigner. That is why I was so interested in the figure of my grandfather, because it seemed strange to me that he had such a different temperament from my own. I wanted to understand the reasons for his attachment and the thousand-year-old attraction that Bubierca exerted on his children, because I have never felt anything like that for any place,” explained the award-winner, thus recounting the origin of his books ‘Lo que a nadie le importa’ and ‘La España vacía’.
40 years of Saint Elizabeth medals
As is tradition, the award ceremony for the medal of Saint Elizabeth of Portugal was held on July 4, the day of Saint Elizabeth, patron saint of the province of Zaragoza and the Provincial Council of Zaragoza. This award was created in 1984 under the presidency of Florencio Repollés Julve and is now 40 years old.
Sergio del Molino joins the list of writers and journalists who have received this award: Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Jesús Moncada, Ildefonso Manuel Gil, José Luis Melero, Gervasio Sánchez, Alfonso Zapater, Miguel Mena… Among the personalities from the field of culture who have been awarded the medal are also names such as Joan Manuel Serrat, José Antonio Labordeta, Fernando Lázaro Carreter, Carlos Saura, Antonio Saura, Santiago Auserón, Guillermo Fatás, Agustín Sánchez Vidal and José Carlos Mainer.
