Avenida de Camilo José Cela
The avenue bears the name of the novelist Camilo José Cela Trulock (Iria Flavia, 1916 – Madrid, 2002), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1989. Madrid’s city council approved the name unanimously on 31 January 2002, two weeks after the writer’s death.
When Camilo José Cela died on 17 January 2002, aged 85, Madrid took barely two weeks to find him a place on the map. On 31 January the council voted unanimously to dedicate an avenue to him, inaugurated on 19 February.
The Salamanca district was no random choice. Of the ten addresses the novelist kept in Madrid over his life, six were around here. The street runs between calle de Azcona and calle del Pintor Moreno Carbonero, in the Guindalera neighborhood, for about 977 meters.
Cela had entered the Royal Spanish Academy in 1957 and collected the great literary prizes: the Nobel in 1989, the Cervantes in 1995. Juan Carlos I made him Marquis of Iria Flavia in 1996, so the author of La colmena spent his final years an aristocrat with a title of his own.
Sources (6)
- Madrid dedica una avenida a Camilo José Cela
- Camilo José Cela – Fundación Princesa de Asturias (Premio 1987)
- Camilo José Cela – Nobel Prize Facts
- Marquesado de Iria Flavia – Wikipedia
- Camilo José Cela – Centro Virtual Cervantes (biografía)
- Camilo José Cela – Patrimonio y paisaje urbano, Ayuntamiento de Madrid