Sebastià Alzamora is awarded the National Poetry Prize

BarcelonaThe writer Sebastià Alzamora has been awarded the National Poetry Prize, which is granted by the Ministry of Culture and is endowed with 30,000 euros. The jury has chosen his work Sala Augusta followed by Llengua materna (Proa, 2025) for "its ability to move, with identical brilliance, from the impassioned language of historical denunciation to the delicacy of the domestic space." They also highlight that in this collection of poems, which is an evocation of Alzamora's memory, the author "weaves together with mastery the collective history and family intimacy."

The book is composed of two poems. In the first, Sala Augusta, Alzamora rescues images and scenes from the Spanish Civil War, such as that of a ship moored in the port of Palma, the Jaume I, which was converted by the Falangists into a prison for a few weeks in 1936. It is a long-verse, free-verse poem that is moving and harrowing. "The author rescues from oblivion the horror of the Civil War from a cinema in the center of Palma that was a prison. His language, suspended between lyricism and rawness, makes the story flow through a tragic transit of innocent deaths, urgently invoking pity and the need for remembrance," the jury emphasizes.

The second poem in the book, Llengua materna, contrasts sharply with the first: Alzamora converts the death and ignominy of the first pages into light through a childhood memory related to his mother. "From a tender melancholy, the poet pays tribute to the figure of the mother and a humble childhood marked by the women who sustained the home by working in the footwear industry," highlights the jury, which adds that every verse of the book "holds the weight of a memory that erects this work as an essential testimony of the human condition." Llengua materna is the seventh book of poems by Sebastià Alzamora, which arrives seven years after La netedat.

"The dead of the war are not only carried with us as a duty of collective memory, but they also directly challenge our present. We live with politicians and citizens who think those crimes were well done. This fascinates and scares me," explained Alzamora last year, in an interview with ARA. For the poet, Llengua maternaended up being a farewell poem to his mother, who died during the pandemic. "I wanted to explain the memory of going with my mother to deliver the work to the factory. She was a riveter: she sewed shoes. She would take the bundle where she carried the shoes in one hand and she would give the other one to me," the writer recounted at the time.

On previous occasions, the National Poetry Prize has recognized the voices of Miriam Reyes, Miren Agur Meabe, Antònia Vicens, and Aurora Luque, among others.