The full title of this article by Eliezer Ríos Camacho (El Nuevo Día) is “Honran a Luis Rafael Sánchez con la prestigiosa Cátedra Cervantes: ‘Esto me ha hecho muy feliz.’” The Cervantes Institute (Instituto Cervantes, based in Madrid, Spain) and the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras (UPR-RP) signed an agreement to create the Cervantes Chair [Cátedra Cervantes], which will be directed by leading Puerto Rican writer Luis Rafael Sánchez. Here are excerpts from El Nuevo Día.
The Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico signed an agreement with the Cervantes Institute through which, among several educational and cultural projects, this honor is conferred on the award-winning Puerto Rican writer.
As an ambassador of Puerto Rican literature, author of stories, novels, and plays treasured in his homeland as well as abroad, and translated into multiple languages, the news of a new recognition of the work and figure of Luis Rafael Sánchez is always a cause for collective joy and pride.
That is why the announcement that the author of “La guaracha del Macho Camacho,” “La pasión según Antígona Pérez,” “Quíntuples,” and “La guagua aérea,” among many other beloved titles, will be the recipient of the Cervantes Chair awarded by the prestigious Instituto Cervantes of Spain, reverberates in the halls of what was the writer’s alma mater and his teaching institution for decades, and which will be the site of this honor.
The Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico welcomes this recognition, whose official announcement was made today, Thursday, and which marks the beginning of a series of cultural and literary activities that will start from the Department of Hispanic Studies to spread throughout the campus.
The Instituto Cervantes was founded in 1991 by the government of Spain, with the main objective of promoting the teaching of the Spanish language and disseminating Spanish and Latin American culture internationally. While the Instituto Cervantes has around twenty branches around the world in cities where Spanish is not the main language, it has also established the Cátedra Cervantes, established in Spanish-speaking countries as part of its efforts to preserve and disseminate the Cervantes legacy in the academic and cultural spheres. [. . .]
Angélica Varela Llavona, rector of the Río Piedras campus, did not hide her satisfaction when offering details about this event to El Nuevo Día. “I feel immensely happy, it is the only way I can find to describe this moment. Being the headquarters of the Cervantes Chair is an immense honor for any academic institution. The University of Puerto Rico, as the headquarters of this chair, becomes the custodian of Cervantes’ thought, by housing not only the in-depth analysis of his work, but also the critical and reflective spirit that defined Cervantes. The Cervantes that I know is the critic of his time, and what has Luis Rafael Sánchez not done through his work, but be the best critic of Puerto Rico? At the same time, the University of Puerto Rico and this Río Piedras Campus have been a continuous center for the debate of ideas and productive criticism.” [. . .]
Translated by Ivette Romero. For full article (in Spanish), see https://www.elnuevodia.com/entretenimiento/cultura/notas/honran-a-luis-rafael-sanchez-con-la-prestigiosa-catedra-cervantes-esto-me-ha-hecho-muy-feliz/g
Also see https://cervantes.org/es/sobre-nosotros/sala-prensa/notas-prensa/instituto-cervantes-crea-catedra-cervantes-universidad
[Photo above by Ramon “Tonito” Zayas.]