The Vice Minister of Culture and Sports, Macarena O’Neill, has participated in the presentation of the first folder of sonnets and serigraphs edited within the framework of the ‘Navagero’ project. The event took place in the auditorium of the Palace of Carlos V and was attended by the Director General of the Alhambra and Generalife, Rodrigo Ruiz-Jiménez, the professor from the Department of Language and Literature Didactics at the University of Granada and project coordinator, Remedios Sánchez, the Granada artist and author of the illustrations in this folder, Juan Vida, and the printer Christian M. Walter.
During her speech, O’Neill recalled that «the Alhambra, and particularly the Generalife gardens, are the cradle of the birth of the Castilian sonnet», as it was precisely in these palatial gardens where the encounter and conversation about the poetic form of the sonnet in the Italian style between the Italian ambassador Pedro Navagero and the poet Juan Boscán took place. An encounter that, ultimately, «would be crucial for Spanish poetry in the 16th and 17th centuries,» as highlighted by O’Neill, since Boscán, followed by Garcilaso, took on the challenge of bringing this poetic form from Italy to life in Spanish, thus initiating a long and fruitful literary trend of sonnet cultivation, which includes authors such as Luis de Góngora, Francisco de Quevedo, Lope de Vega, and Miguel Cervantes, among many others.
In order to celebrate «this extraordinary literary milestone» – as detailed by the Vice Minister of Culture and Sports – «the Alhambra and Generalife Board launched an ambitious program four years ago to recover, renew, and celebrate the Spanish sonnet», whose first result has materialized in the ‘Navagero, in the Italian style’ folder of sonnets and illustrations that, in a limited and numbered edition, includes unpublished sonnets from eight contemporary poets, Antonio Gamoneda, Antonio Carvajal, Luis García Montero, Javier Salvago, Jenaro Talens, Raquel Lanseros, Ángeles Mora, and Juan Antonio González Iglesias, as well as eight original serigraphs from the Granada painter Juan Vida, printed in the serigraphy workshop of Cristian M. Walter.
«All of them, poems and drawings, have been created for this edition under the common denominator of the Alhambra as a source of inspiration, demonstrating that this palatial ensemble has not only been an artistic inspiration in the past, something widely known, but continues to be so in the present,» summarizes O’Neill.
Coordinated by the professor of Language and Literature Didactics at the University of Granada, Remedios Sánchez, the ‘Navagero’ heritage interpretation and contemporary creation project (2021-2026) aims to disseminate the sonnet as a poetic form born in Granada and commemorate the arrival of Carlos V at the Alhambra almost 500 years ago (in 1526).
In addition to promoting conversations with around thirty nationally and internationally renowned poets about the sonnet, recorded in audiovisual format to be disseminated through the Alhambra’s own channels, the ‘Navagero’ project commissions sonnets from literary figures, always inspired by the Alhambra, to be published. It also collaborates with significant artists to illustrate its publication in a dual format: in folders of poems with serigraphs and in a volume, aimed at the general public, which will collect all these poetic and artistic creations, with publication scheduled for 2026. That same year, literary sessions on the sonnet will be held at the Alhambra.
An encounter for history
In 1526, coinciding with the wedding of Emperor Charles V to Isabella of Portugal and their subsequent move with their court to the Alhambra, an encounter took place in the Generalife gardens between the Italian ambassador Pedro Navagero and the poet Juan Boscán that would be fundamental for the history and development of Spanish poetry in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Juan Boscán, persuaded by Navagero, tried sonnets in Castilian and other poetic forms used by the good authors of Italy, which was the origin of a crucial event that came to change the way of composing verses in Spain since the 15th century: the introduction of the sonnet, a poetic composition consisting of fourteen lines of major art and rhyme, usually hendecasyllables, organized in two quatrains and two tercets.
For this reason, and with the year 2026 in sight, when the 500 years of this fortunate historical literary encounter are commemorated, the Alhambra and Generalife Board decided to commemorate it with various activities that would recall the significant intertwining of literary creation with the Alhambra, focused on the history of the sonnet.