LET'S SAVE THE HOUSE OF VICENTE ALEIXANDRE
LET'S SAVE THE HOUSE OF POETRY

"DE VELINTONIA AL CIELO"
See TV documentary:
http://unedtv.blogspot.com/2009/10/vicente-aleixandre-de-velintonia-al.html

History of our struggle

This house in the old Velintonia street (today, 3 Vicente Aleixandre street, Madrid, Spain) is where Vicente Aleixandre spent most of his life. Vicente Aleixandre (1898 – 1984) was a Poet of the Generation '27 and Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature in 1977. In this house Aleixandre wrote most of his poems and welcomed the most important Spanish poets of the 20th Century. This house is a symbol of the history of Spanish poetry.

In 1995, a group of friends and admirers of the work of Vicente Aleixandre started up a protest campaign demanding the central government to purchase the house of the Nobel, abandoned from 1986, and to transform it both in the headquarters of the Vicente Aleixandre’s Foundation and in a centre of documentation and study of the 20th Century Spanish Poetry.

Through a manifesto-letter, we gathered more than two hundred signatures of the most outstanding poets and intellectuals of Spain and representatives of the most significant cultural institutions and foundations. Some of these being The Cultural Centre of the Generation of 1927 (Centro Cultural Generación del 27), The Federico García Lorca Foundation, The Gerardo Diego Foundation, The Ateneo of Madrid, the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, The Association of Italian Hispanists, The Miguel Hernández Foundation and The Cervantes Institute. In December 2006, we received a letter from the Irish Nobel Prize Winner Mr. Seamus Heaney in which he stated his support of our claim.

In 2005, ten years after our first initiative, in view of the persistent institutional neglect, we decided to organize a gathering in front of the historical house, where many cultural figures of wide renown were present. This action of protest appeared in different mass media, and for some weeks it attracted attention of the Madrid City Council, the Community of Madrid and the Spanish Ministry of Culture. However, they did nothing to save the house. From that date on, the Association of Friends of Vicente Aleixandre has gone on organizing different gatherings and actions in order to remind our rulers that this emblematic house must be saved and preserved.

The heirs to Aleixandre have already decided that if they don’t receive a fair tender from the government, they will sell the building, without delay, to the highest bidder, and our country and the rest of the world would lose a precious cultural heritage forever.

On the 7th of October, 1977, Vicente Aleixandre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Thirty-three years later, the place where he welcomed the greatest exponents of the contemporary poetry, is a forgotten building ignored by our ruling class.

We will go on fighting to save it!

Contact address: asociaciondeamigos@vicentealeixandre.es