For yet another year, the president of the Spanish Antonio Machado Foundation, Manuel Nuñez Encabo, has led the tribute to the universal poet 84 after his death in the French town of Collioure.
Less than fifty people, without municipal or provincial representation, have attended this Saturday on a sunny morning the 84th anniversary of the poet’s death, which curiously coincides with the 40th anniversary of the bust of Machado, the work of the artist Pablo Serrano.
But these notable absences from the City Council and Provincial Council -the territorial delegate of the Board had excused their presence, when inaugurating at that same time the new edition of the Soria Truffle Fair in Abejar- have not prevented the brilliance of the act that year after year, comes to remind us of the legacy and teaching of the universal poet.
The President of the Manuel Núñez Encabo Foundation, who has once again proposed Machado as a National Hero of Democracy in Spain, precisely at times and moments that are disturbing for democracy in our country.
And that is why the president of the Foundation has made a call to attention to the parties in favor of democracy and of the Spanish people, forgetting other interests, as Machado did in favor of the Republic.
And we must not forget that it was Antonio Machado who perhaps more and better and up to the last moment defended the republican and democratic ideas of people’s sovereignty, as Raymond Carr reminds us in his Spain 1808/1939.
The president recalled, as did the rest of the participants later, the figure of the disappeared professor and Machadian José María Martínez Laseca, as a collaborator of the Foundation.
The Provincial Director of Education Javier Barrio has pledged his word for the student diffusion of the National Award for Development and Sustainability of Nature and the Environment for its sixth edition.
The vice-rector of the Soria University Campus, José Luis Ruíz Zapatero, has completed the previous interventions from the university point of view, the training of teachers and the look at Europe that Machado already cites in his texts.
Finally, José Ángel Mayor and Gwendolyne Raveraud have lent their voices for the reading of “A Orillas del Duero”, and an offering of flowers has been made to the bust of Machado.
history of the bust
The director of the educational center, Miguel Ángel Delgado, has focused his intervention on the bust of the poet, since last November 19 marked the 40th anniversary of its placement, a bust that has become an obligatory milestone for all visitors to the city and meeting point for tributes to the poet.
Delgado recalled how, after unsuccessful attempts to dedicate a statue to him, in the 1970s, in the last throes of Francoism and the first of democracy, Leopodol Ridruejo from Soria proposed in 1982 to Pablo Serrano that he give up one of his sculptures to the Soria City Council, which he offered for 3 million pesetas, a symbolic amount since its real price was higher.
The then mayor of Soria José Luis Liso closed the deal and at the informative event that was held in August of that same year, Serrano surprised the public by saying that he would not charge anything for the bronze, giving it away to the city.
The inauguration of the monument took place on November 19, 1982.
The press reports that Eusebio Mínguez, director of the Institute, acted as maintainer of the act, giving the floor to Pablo Serrano, author and donor of the work, who delivered an emotional and well-spun speech, ending with these words: “May the memory of Antonio Machado unites us in tenderness, tolerance and love”.
“The figure that is contemplated today is the first installed in Spain in a public space and is the fruit of the perseverance of many of those who have preceded us, men and women with clearly marked and very well-defined ideals, in very difficult times. difficult to recognize the figure of the universal poet”, he stressed.
