that was The founder and first director of the Cervantes Institute took delivery of its legacy to the institution and took the opportunity to comment on the situation of the Valley of the Fallen, in the one that worked forcibly
The vault that gives shelter to the Box of letters was the place chosen by the Cervantes Institute for Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz made delivery of his legacy to the entity. The historian, “though not a man of letters for a lot that you have written” according to his own words, he entered only three objects in the feature safety deposit box, engraved with the number 1467. Born in Madrid in 1926, Sánchez-Albornoz saw his father, Claudio, who was a minister of the Republic and even came to the chair-in-exile between 1962 and 1971, was first removed from his position in the Academy of History and then forced to leave the country at the start of the dictatorship. Precisely of his father, now deceased, was awarded the medal of the Academy that gave the honoree, a gold of 1926 already tried to return but not found responsible. In addition, he bequeathed a pendant also in gold given to you by the Academy of Portuguese History and the very pen with which he signed the agreement.
Accompanied by the current director of the Cervantes, Luis García Montero, the founder and first responsible of the Institution back in 1975, wanted to show their “joy” by the recognition and expressed his “pride” by the expansion of the same all over the world: at present, the institution has 87 centres across the world. Once done with the delivery of the legacy, Sanchez-Albornoz saw the media and, as represaliado of the regime, gave his opinion on the controversy that has generated the exhumation of the corpse of Franco’s Valley of the Fallen: “it Is tremendously painful to discuss even the existence of the Monument,” he said.
In his youth, Nicolas Sanchez-Albornoz stressed by trying to restore the Fedaración University State (WAS) in the underground after having been censored by the regime. By these attempts, the dictatorship, he was sentenced in 1947 to six years of hard labor in the mausoleum of franco. After the first year of conviction, managed to escape to united States via Argentina, and may only return to the death of Franco. His 92 years and as a member of the Royal Academy of History, Sánchez-Albornoz has it clear: “it is Not so much that Spain does not have memory, such as that the dictatorship is not a memory because he’s still alive. Here there was never a Nuremberg and that would have made it much easier to heal the wounds.”
“In the language preserves the human experience”
Garcia Montero, who with this tribute and the recently opened exhibition the Printing presses of the lost homeland (140 works published in exile) mark clearly the direction that we want to give to Cervantes, he said he wanted “to be the height of the circumstances,” and suggested the event as the restitution of a tort-comparative: “the tongue is preserved the human experience and, when we live in times marked by the conception of the same as of use and throw, you must save our past as a treasure,” he said. The director of the institution explained that the recognition of figures such as Sánchez-Albornoz expressing “dignity in the time of the accelerations to commit ourselves to a better future.”
the first director of The Cervantes thus joins the list of illustrious who have been leaving various objects of value in the Case of the letters, mode of time capsule for future generations. Between 1762 boxes treasures of the vault, you can read the names of Francisco Ayala, Margarita Salas, Antoni Tapies, Luis García Berlanga or Elena Poniatowska. In addition to the delivery of the legacy, the honorees will attend a debate on memory and the Cervantes with Minister Carmen Calvo, the director, Fernando Colomo, and professor Leandro Prados, among others.
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