Elche (Alicante) airport will shortly be given the name of Miguel Hernandez .
The change of name was approved by the government in celebration of the 110th anniversary of the birth of the Spanish poet
The Minister of Public Works, José Luis Ábalos, has indicated that the procedures have begun for the re-naming and the El Altet terminal will be known as Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández.
“Spain owes him tribute and it means printing his name in a sky that neither becomes cloudy nor ends to pay a small part of the immense debt we have with him.”
MIGUEL HERNANDEZ GILABERT
Miguel Hernández Gilabert (30 October 1910 – 28 March 1942) was a 20th-century Spanish-language poet and playwright associated with the Generation of ’27 and the Generation of ’36 movements. Born and raised in a family of low resources, he was self-taught in what refers to literature, and struggled against an unfavourable environment to build up his intellectual education, such as a father who physically abused him for spending time with books instead of working, and who took him out of school as soon as he finished his primary education. At school, he became a friend of Ramón Sijé, a well-educated boy who lent and recommended books to Hernández, and whose death would inspire his most famous poem, Elegy.
Hernández died of tuberculosis, imprisoned due to his active participation on the Republican side of the civil war, and having escaped death-penalty only thanks to Neruda’s intervention, who was the Chilean ambassador in Spain at the time. His last book, Cancionero y romancero de ausencias, was published after his death, and is a collection of the poems he wrote in prison, some written in rudimentary pieces of toilet paper, others preserved in letters to his wife, is considered one of the finest pieces of Spanish poetry of the 20th century.
