Juan Goytisolo wins the Formentor Prize

Writer Juan Goytisolo has three reasons to feel excited. Firstly, because in 1959 he was part of  the group, led by Carlos Barral and Camilo Jose Cela, that started the Formentor literary forum and the corresponding Formentor International Literature Prize. Secondly, because the president of the jury  that has this year awarded him the prize was the late Carlos Fuentes, who died on May 15. And finally, because he was joined at the awards ceremony by some of his best friends, Florence Malraux, Jean Daniel, Joan Tarrida, his editor, and Aline Schulman, his French translator.

"I'm not out there looking for awards. If you give me one that’s okay and if not, well that’s okay too. But having said that, I find this prize particularly nice, because of what Formentor has meant in the past, because of all the writers and editors who have participated, many of whom were brought here by the late editor Monique Lange. I think it’s great that the prize has been brought back. "

Two or three years ago Basilio Baltasar and Carlos Fuentes, supported by the Barceló family (who own the hotel Formentor that the hosts literary event and awards) and Buadas decided to reinstate the prize for 2011, 50 years after its first edition. Carlos Fuentes was the winner. The award is endowed with 50,000 euros and has now been won by Juan Goytisolo in recognition of his long literary career. At the awards ceremony, journalist and academic Juan Luis Cebrian, executive chairman of PRISA, summed up the writer and his career.

Goytisolo was saddened to talk about Carlos Fuentes. "I learned of his death when I was at the Caracas Book Fair and it came as a terrible shock. It affected me a lot, I never imagined that a person of such vitality and energy would die before me. He gave us all this  incredible energy. I travel across the Atlantic only now and again, but he was a tireless traveler. The last month of his life he was in the United States, Brazil, Chile and Argentina before returning to Mexico. I was delighted to see here Silvia Lemus (his widow). She’s making a great effort to put a brave face on things ".

"In the sixties" recalled Goytisolo, "Formentor was a fresh breeze in that stagnant, unbreathable air. It was an island of freedom. I was living in Paris, but for writers who were in Spain it was important for them to meet with European colleagues, to get a breath of fresh air. It was so important was that the security services soon took an interest in those meetings. I was told that police had  infiltrated and had given orders to the cleaning ladies to collect all the papers left by Einaudi, Feltrinelli or me. We must have been three really dangerous communists!"

Formentor Prize winners included Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Juan Garcia Hortelano, Jorge Semprun, Nathalie Sarraute, Saul Bellow, Witold Gombrowwicz. "I have amazing memories of those times."

In 1962, the Italian publisher Giorgio Einaudi published Cante della nuova resistenza spagnola (1939-1961) and the Spanish government declared him persona non grata and banned him from entering Spain. Formentor then began a pilgrimage to various cities: Corfu (Greece), Salzburg (Austria), Valescure (France) or Gammhart (Tunisia). "In the end, the prize died of natural causes. I think it's great to bring it back, that it is independent, non-institutional and rigorous. Next year I am president of the jury and I will be very careful to shortlist the highest quality nominees. "

Juan Goytisolo (Barcelona, 1931) always jokes about the day he was born, January 5. "Everyone told me that I’d been brought by the Magi and I thought till I was 18 that I’d been born on January 6, the Epiphany or Three Kings Day". The author of books Señas de identidad, Don Julián, Juan sin Tierra, Coto vedado and En los reinos de Taifa, says he has given up on the novel "It's definitive. I have nothing to say and so it’s better I shut up. I do not write to make money nor to the dictates of the publishers. "

But he’s writing poetry. Goytisolo will soon surprise us with his first book of poems. "There are nine, no more no less. When I gave up on the novel it was as if storks flew through my head and left these poems. Anyway," he adds, "in my novels there’s also some poetry such as in Juan sin Tierra and in Las semanas en el jardín but is part of the narrative."

Goytisolo says he’s now working on literary essays and newspaper articles, "and sometimes, between them, I come up with something different, like short Iberian farces".

Reading remains for him an endless source of satisfaction: "As Jonathan Swift said -- he’s an author whom I admire very much --  I'm an incurable reader. This summer I've been rereading the Russians, Gogol, Bulgakov ... and I’m preparing an essay on them. Last summer I read exclusively Diderot and Flaubert. In winter, I try to read young authors and catch up on  what is happening. "

Goytisolo regrets that El País is no longer distributed in Morocco. "It used to arrive two days late and and of course people had already read anything that interested them online. I'm in a state of helplessness regarding these technologies. They say it is very easy, but I’m not really interested in pushing a button and having all the information. Anyway I have a subscription to El País and I read Le Monde and The International Herald Tribune, so I'm pretty well informed. "

And news and current affairs feed into his own articles. "They are reflections on the events happening, sometimes they’re satirical, sometimes more serious. I think that what we are experiencing now is good fuel for humor. We dreamed a dream of being rich, new rich and have woken up poor again. " "What do I think of politicians?", 9% of the Spanish trust politicians. I do not. For once I'm with the majority. "