Redaccion
In two years, Madrid will have a poetic center of reference. It is Velintonia, the house of Nobel Prize winner Vicente Aleixandre. After its purchase by the Community of Madrid, the goal is to renovate it and make it the main center for activities in honor of the centenary of the Generation of ’27.
Within its walls lies one of the most ambitious cultural projects in Madrid for the upcoming years. Velintonia, a ruin witness of the Silver Age of Spanish literature, will house the most important poetry center in Madrid.
The Community of Madrid will acquire Velintonia as the only bid in the auction
This was expressed this Saturday by the Minister of Culture, Tourism and Sports, Mariano de Paco. The regional government was the only one to bid to acquire this property at the minimum accepted amount of 3,193,225 euros. «The great celebration that we want to have for the centenary of the Generation of ’27 is precisely the opening of Velintonia. For that, it had to be bought, that phase has already been fulfilled. The next step will be to open its doors so that citizens can enter that space of literature, culture, and intangible heritage that Vicente Aleixandre left us,» said the minister.
To achieve this, a reform phase must be carried out beforehand so that all visitors can perceive «in some way what that house of poetry was and is today.» «The first project is to prevent it from falling, and that’s why the Community of Madrid was in such a hurry to acquire the property or have others acquire it,» he recalled.
After the bid made by the Community in a public auction, work is already underway for the immediate declaration of cultural interest. The next step will be the approval of the reform project and conversion into a Museum House of Vicente Aleixandre and House of Poetry. The goal is to complete the project in two years so that Velintonia becomes the central focus of the first centenary of the Generation of ’27.
Vallehermoso, Velintonia, and its literary legacy: Discovering the neighborhood that inspired the great poets
On its parquet floors, Lorca or Miguel Hernández walked. Those walls were already the home of Poetry during Vicente Aleixandre’s lifetime, the only Spanish poet Nobel Prize in Literature along with Juan Ramón Jiménez.
