Estepona to officially open new auditorium with international poetry prize

Estepona is to officially open its new Mirador del Carmen auditorium on 30 October with the Ciudad de Estepona poetry award ceremony. Entrance is free to the event and Francisco Contreras Molina, known as Niño de Elche, will give a recital, according to the town hall.

The opening of the auditorium comes seven months after the rest of the building, which includes a library and the town’s first music conservatory, was opened.

Some 1,511 entries were submitted for the poetry competition, which is now in its third year, including submissions from poets across Andalucía and other regions in Spain as well as Central and South America, across Europe, the USA, China, Morocco and Turkey.

This year’s winner is 'Paisaje nevado con patinadores y trampa para pájaros' (Snowy landscape with skaters and bird trap) by Mexican poet and doctor Orlando Mondragón. He will receive a prize of 6,000 euros and his poem will be published by the publisher Pre-Textos.

The jury considered that it was a serene and peaceful book, "as the best way of dealing with nostalgia that does not wish to hurt or be hurt, a collection of poems that delves into a world far from clichés and with great poetic intensity".

Orlando Mondragón (Ciudad Altamirano, 1993) made his literary debut in 2017 with 'Epicedio al padre', with which he won the fourth Alejandro Aura young poet’s award. He received a scholarship from the Mexican literary foundation in 2019 and won the 34th International Loewe Poetry Prize in 2021 with his book 'Cuadernos de patología humana' (Visor, 2022).

In addition to the recital of Niño de Elche, there will also be a conversation between Manuel Borrás, editor of the winning poem and Alejandro Simón Partal, writer and coordinator of the prize.

"The extraordinary participation with works received from across Spain and from practically all Latin American countries, confirms the relevance of this literary prize, which in just a few years has established itself as one of the most sought-after by Spanish-speaking poets,” said Simón Partal.