International World Heritage Day 2023. Literary Walk in the Carmen de los Mártires
The Agencia Albaicín-Granada and the Granada City of Literature UNESCO Office are offering two free guided tours of the Paseo de los Poetas in the Carmen de los Mártires to commemorate the International World Heritage Day 2023. The literary walk will be led by Jesús Ortega, and will take place on 16 and 17 November 2023, starting at 12 noon.
Registrations, for a maximum of 30 people, must be made on the Agencia Albaicín-Granada website. The meeting point for the literary walks will be the entrance to the Carmen de los Mártires (Paseo de los Mártires, s/n – Granada), and they will last for one hour.
The literary walk consists of 22 plaques with poems by some of the best poets of the Spanish language, and runs through the most unique areas of the Carmen de los Mártires, in places plenty of beauty and stillness. The route is random, non-linear, allowing for surprise and discovery. The plaques are usually placed next to benches, allowing for rest, contemplation and reading. In addition to the poems, each plaque contains QR codes with expanded information about each poet.
The authors featured on the plaques are the winners of the City of Granada-Federico García Lorca International Poetry Prize, from 2004 to 2022: 1) Ángel González; 2) José Emilio Pacheco; 3) Blanca Varela; 4) Francisco Brines; 5) Tomás Segovia; 6) José Manuel Caballero Bonald; 7) María Victoria Atencia; 8) Fina García Marruz; 9) Pablo García Baena; 10) Eduardo Lizalde; 11) Rafael Guillén; 12) Rafael Cadenas; 13) Ida Vitale; 14) Pere Gimferrer; 15) Darío Jaramillo Agudelo; 16) Julia Uceda; 17) Yolanda Pantin; 18) Luis Alberto de Cuenca; 19) Raúl Zurita. Three special plaques have also been added: those dedicated to Federico García Lorca, San Juan de la Cruz and José Zorrilla.
The poet San Juan de la Cruz lived in this space between 1582 and 1588, when he was prior of the Carmelite convent of Los Mártires. In the gardens through which we walk today, he composed works that represent the purest expression of mystical poetry. His memory remains in elements such as the aqueduct he had built next to the orchard or the legendary cedar tree of San Juan. And the poet José Zorrilla, author of Don Juan Tenorio, lived here during his stay in Granada to be named National Poet in 1889.
The declaration of the Albaicín as a World Heritage Site took place on 17 December 1994, as an extension of the Alhambra and Generalife, which had already been declared a World Heritage Site ten years earlier (2 November 1984). In 2010, on the same 16 November, flamenco was declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by Unesco. And on 1 December 2014, the city of Granada was named a new member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN), the first Spanish-speaking city to obtain this designation.
On this occasion, on the 16th of November, the Albaicín Granada Agency celebrates the International World Heritage Day with a wide programme of free activities, linked to the UNESCO declarations of the Albaicín as World Heritage, Flamenco as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and Granada as a UNESCO City of Literature. The whole programme HERE.
