The 2025 Cervantes Prize has gone to the Mexican Gonzalo Celorio. This was announced by the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, at the ministry headquarters in Madrid this Monday. An award that goes to the essayist, writer and critic “for his exceptional literary work, profound and sustained by Hispanic culture,” noted the jury, which highlights that Celorio “combines a critical lucidity that explores sentimental identity and loss.” Celorio (Mexico City, 77 years old) thus wins the highest award for literature in the Spanish language, created in 1976 and endowed with 125,000 euros. The award will be presented on April 23 at the University of Alcalá de Henares.
The jury in this edition has been made up, among others, of the last two winners of the award in 2023 and 2024, the writers and language academics Luis Mateo Díez and Álvaro Pombo, respectively; the academic Aura Egido, the critic Constantino Bértolo and the writer Manuel Rico, as well as Mauricio Carrera representing the Union of Universities of Latin America and the Caribbean (UDUALC).
In the last two years, the Cervantes was awarded to Spanish authors, something that broke the traditional alternation between Spanish and Ibero-American authors, which in the last decade has become every two years. The two previous winners of Luis Mateo Díez were the Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas (2022) and the Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi (2021). In the 2020 and 2019 editions, the Spanish poets Francisco Brines and Joan Margarit won, respectively, while in 2018 and 2017 the Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale and the Nicaraguan Sergio Ramírez won.
The candidates for this award are proposed by the plenary session of the Royal Spanish Academy, by the Language Academies of Spanish-speaking countries and by the winners of past editions. This year’s applications closed on October 21.
(Breaking news, there will be an extension soon.)