Antonio Gamoneda

Antonio Gamoneda
Born	May 30 of 1931 Oviedo, Spain
Occupation	poet
Nationality	Spanish
Notable awards	Miguel de Cervantes Prize 2006

Antonio Gamoneda (born May 30, 1931) is a Spanish poet, winner of the Cervantes Prize in 2006.

Antonio Gamoneda was born in Oviedo, Asturias, on May 30, 1931. His father, named Antonio, was a modernist poet who published only one book, Otra más alta vida (Another higher life) in 1919. In 1934, already an orphan, he moved with his mother, Amelia Lobon, to León. The presence of his mother as a refuge from the horror and misery of war is seen in all his poetry. In 1936, with schools closed due to the Spanish Civil War, he became literate by reading, on his own, his father's book.

The poet lived originally in the main working-class district of León. This place was a privileged post to observe the repression carried out during the war and postwar years.

In 1941, he joined the religious school of the Augustinian Fathers. In 1943 the poet dropped himself out.

The day he turned fourteen he started working as a messenger in the Banco de Comercio. He completed his pre-university studies on his own and remained in the condition of bank employee for twenty-four years until 1969.

While working at the bank he became and was part of the intellectual resistance to the Francisco Franco dictatorship. He published his first book in 1960, Sublevación inmóvil (Motionless revolt), a work that was a runner-up to the Adonais prize. The book was a break from the traditional realistic rules of the time in Spain. In 1969 he started running the cultural services of the Diputación Provincial de León, and from 1970, the León State collection of poetry, trying to promote a progressive culture with the money of the dictatorship. He was deprived of his official status, and subsequently readmitted, by court order. During these years he began working regularly in different cultural magazines.

This first stage was followed by eight years absent from the poetry world, years strongly marked by the death of the dictator Francisco Franco and the beginning of the so-called "transición". The ideological and existential crisis of the poet is felt in his next book Descripción de la mentira (A description of the lie), León 1977, a long poem that marked a shift towards a total maturity. Later publication are Lápidas (Tombstones) (Madrid, 1987) and Edad (Age), a volume collecting all his poetry until 1987, revised by the author, and that won the National Prize for Literature in Spain.

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