Miguel de Cervantes Prize Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Miguel de Cervantes Prize
Medal of the Miguel de Cervantes Prize
Presented by	Ministry of Culture
Country	Spain
Reward	€125,000
First awarded	1976

The Miguel de Cervantes Prize (also known as the Spanish: Premio de Literatura en Lengua Castellana Miguel de Cervantes) is a very important award given every year. It celebrates the amazing work of a writer who has spent their life creating stories, poems, and other works in the Spanish language. It's like a lifetime achievement award for Spanish writers!

History of the Cervantes Prize
- Cervantes Prize and Nobel Prize Winners
List of Winners
Winners by Country
See also

History of the Cervantes Prize

This special prize was created in 1975 by the Ministry of Culture of Spain. The first award was given out the very next year, in 1976. Many people, including the Encyclopædia Britannica, say it is the most important and valuable award for Spanish-language books.

The winner receives a large sum of money, 125,000 euros. This makes it one of the richest literary prizes in the world! The prize honors writers from any country where Spanish is spoken. It looks at all the books, poems, and plays a writer has created throughout their life.

So far, out of 47 awards given, only six have gone to women writers. In 1988, María Zambrano became the first woman to win this prize. She was a Spanish writer and philosopher.

The award is named after Miguel de Cervantes, a famous Spanish writer. He wrote the classic book Don Quixote. The people who are considered for the prize are suggested by a group called the Association of Spanish Language Academies. This group includes the Royal Spanish Academy.

As of 2023, 49 people have received the Miguel de Cervantes Prize. They have been honored for writing novels, poetry, short stories, essays, translations, philosophy, or plays. Sometimes, they are even recognized for a mix of these different types of writing!

Cervantes Prize and Nobel Prize Winners

It's interesting to know that three writers who won the Miguel de Cervantes Prize also won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Octavio Paz won the Cervantes Prize in 1981 and the Nobel Prize in 1990. Mario Vargas Llosa received the Cervantes Prize in 1994 and the Nobel Prize in 2010. Camilo José Cela won the Nobel Prize first in 1989, and then the Cervantes Prize in 1995.

List of Winners

You can find the full list of winners on the official Premio 'Miguel Cervantes' website.

Year	Winner	Country	Genre(s)
1976	Jorge Guillén	Spain	poetry
1977	Alejo Carpentier	Cuba	novel, essay
1978	Dámaso Alonso	Spain	poetry
1979	Jorge Luis Borges	Argentina	short story, poetry, essay, translation
1979	Gerardo Diego	Spain	poetry
1980	Juan Carlos Onetti	Uruguay	novel
1981	Octavio Paz	Mexico	poetry, essay
1982	Luis Rosales	Spain	poetry, essay
1983	Rafael Alberti	Spain	poetry
1984	Ernesto Sabato	Argentina	novel, essay
1985	Gonzalo Torrente Ballester	Spain	novel
1986	Antonio Buero Vallejo	Spain	drama
1987	Carlos Fuentes	Mexico	novel, essay
1988	María Zambrano	Spain	philosophy, essay
1989	Augusto Roa Bastos	Paraguay	novel
1990	Adolfo Bioy Casares	Argentina	novel, short story
1991	Francisco Ayala	Spain	novel, short story, essay, translation
1992	Dulce María Loynaz	Cuba	poetry
1993	Miguel Delibes	Spain	novel
1994	Mario Vargas Llosa	Peru	novel, essay, short story, drama
1995	Camilo José Cela	Spain	novel
1996	José García Nieto	Spain	poetry
1997	Guillermo Cabrera Infante	Cuba	novel
1998	José Hierro	Spain	poetry
1999	Jorge Edwards	Chile	novel
2000	Francisco Umbral	Spain	novel, essay
2001	Álvaro Mutis	Colombia	poetry, novel
2002	José Jiménez Lozano	Spain	novel
2003	Gonzalo Rojas	Chile	poetry
2004	Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio	Spain	novel, essay
2005	Sergio Pitol	Mexico	novel
2006	Antonio Gamoneda	Spain	poetry
2007	Juan Gelman	Argentina	poetry
2008	Juan Marsé	Spain	novel
2009	José Emilio Pacheco	Mexico	poetry, novel, short story
2010	Ana María Matute	Spain	novel
2011	Nicanor Parra	Chile	poetry
2012	José Manuel Caballero Bonald	Spain	poetry, novel
2013	Elena Poniatowska	Mexico	novel
2014	Juan Goytisolo	Spain	novel, essay
2015	Fernando del Paso	Mexico	novel, poetry, essay, drama, short story
2016	Eduardo Mendoza	Spain	novel, drama
2017	Sergio Ramírez	Nicaragua	novel, short story, essay
2018	Ida Vitale	Uruguay	poetry, prose, essay
2019	Joan Margarit	Spain	poetry
2020	Francisco Brines	Spain	poetry
2021	Cristina Peri Rossi	Uruguay	prose, poetry, short story, translation
2022	Rafael Cadenas	Venezuela	poetry, essay
2023	Luis Mateo Díez	Spain	novel, essay