Felipe VI has formally presented the Joan Margarit Prize, created by the Instituto Cervantes last September, nearly two decades after the state's recognition of the grande dame of Canadian letters through the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature.
Mónica and Pol Lezcano Margarit, the daughter and grandson of the Catalan poet and professor of architecture, who died in 2021, were tasked with giving a reading of poems written both by Margaret Atwood and by their relative during the ceremony, held at the University of Victoria.
"We would like," the King said in his speech, "you to receive this prize as a token of gratitude for having taught us how to read better: how to read our times, how to read our societies and how to read ourselves".
On Thursday, the head of state concludes a three-day tour of Canada, accompanied by First Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo, with stops in Ottawa and Toronto. The pair have taken part in several business meetings and have been received, among other political leaders, by Labour Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Atwood, in a speech entitled 'Poetry in Hard Times', recalled that in authoritarian regimes poets "have been among the first to be silenced, because they could say what was forbidden, and say it convincingly, and that is threatening to autocrats".
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