Spain received the legacy of Salvadoran Roque Dalton at the Cervantes Institute

He The Cervantes Institute in Madrid received the legacy of Salvadoran writer Roque Dalton (1935-1975), which includes a letter from the poet to his mother and which constitutes, according to his son, an "act of justice."

#RoqueDalton 's legacy includes a copy of his Cuban phone book.

A newspaper clipping with an image of the author alongside musicians #SilvioRodríguez , #PabloMilanés , #NoelNicola and #PacoIbáñez has also been donated.

▶️ Video of the event: https://t.co/DmeuIGW9nr pic.twitter.com/40U4xlXlOo

— Instituto Cervantes (@InstCervantes) May 14, 2025

At the event presided over by the director of the Cervantes Institute , Luis García Montero , Jorge Dalton, filmmaker and son of the poet , presented several of his personal belongings , such as a shirt, a brush, first editions of some of his works, and photographs, which were kept in the Caja de las Letras.

García Montero remembered the poet as an example of “human and poetic truth” whose murder was “an example of injustice, political falsehood, and meanness.”

El Salvador, defined as “the thumb of America” by Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, was widely present in the work of Dalton, an author who “suffered bitterly from the lack of knowledge about the country where he was born,” as Jorge Dalton declared.

"Luckily, my father was part of a literary conspiracy that took place in Cuba in the 1960s , where all the great writers of the Latin American boom came together," he added.

Born into a bourgeois family, Dalton combined his political activism with his passion for literature.

A member of the Salvadoran Communist Party since 1958, he suffered persecution and imprisonment that led to his exile in various countries such as Guatemala, Mexico, Czechoslovakia, and Cuba.

He returned to El Salvador in 1973 to join the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), one of the five groups that years later would form the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

In May 1975, at the age of 39, he was executed by his own comrades.

Dalton is considered one of the most important Central American writers , with works such as Taberna y otros lugares , recognized with the Casa de las Américas prize and considered his most significant book.

During his academic career, he was a founding member of the University Literary Circle and represented El Salvador at international events, receiving multiple awards and establishing himself as one of the most promising voices in Latin American literature of the 1950s and 1960s.

Dalton's poetry stood out for its lyricism, irony and strong social content , influenced by surrealism, the avant-garde and contemporary poets such as Nicanor Parra and Ernesto Cardenal.

His work includes landmark titles such as El turno del ofendido (1963) and Las historias prohibidos de Pulgarcito (1975). He also explored essays, plays, and prose fiction , leaving a legacy that still resonates as a symbol of struggle and expression in Latin American literature.