World Poetry Day is an event that has been celebrated since 1999, when the General Conference of UNESCO set 21 March, coinciding with the beginning of spring, as the day chosen to commemorate the poetic art and promote the reading and writing of poetry in all its manifestations.
From the Ánxel Casal Library we would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the poet Antonio Machado (1875-1939), whose 150th birthday will be celebrated in 2025.

The illustrious poet from Seville was one of the first representatives of the famous Generation of ‘98; he introduced modernism in Spain (a field also cultivated by his brother Manuel, of whom we also exhibit some works co-written with Antonio). Later, he developed a poetry of an intimate and symbolic nature, immortalised in his best known work, Campos de Castilla (Fields of Castile).

Antonio Machado's imprint on Spanish and universal literature and culture in the 20th century is incalculable. Painters such as Picasso and Miró, poets such as Jorge Guillén and García Lorca, and singer-songwriters such as Joan Manuel Serrat, paid tribute to the genius.
What better occasion than to welcome the arrival of spring and World Poetry Day with these verses that Machado wrote in one of his best-known poems:

My heart waits too, towards the light and towards the coming, another miracle of spring.