With this legacy in memory of the historian of literature from the Middle Ages to the Golden Age Francisco Rico (1942-2024), the Cervantes Institute has paid tribute this Tuesday to the professor of Medieval Hispanic Literatures at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, considered one of the greatest experts in history in the Quixoteand who directed the Classical Library collection of the Royal Spanish Academy.
An event in which Victoria Camps, philosopher and widow of Rico, participated; Daniel Rico, professor and son of the honoree; the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun; the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero; the director of the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Machado, and the writer Jordi Gracia.
In safe deposit box 1406 of this former bank vault that now treasures the legacies of personalities from literature, culture and science, two books have been introduced, the first and the last that Rico wrote.
Is about The picaresque novel and the point of viewhis first important book in 1969, and A long loyaltya kind of collection of profiles of friends, teachers, philologists who, although it is not literally the last one he published, is the one he fully prepared before he died, his son and his widow have indicated.
An Italian tie is another of the objects that will be kept in the Box of Letters to remember how “extremely conceited” he was, in such a way that he never took it off, not even in the gym or sometimes to sleep, they have added.
Also a childhood book, one of the Guillermo Brown series, which was one of his first reads and which, in addition, Daniel Rico has indicated, “could explain that mischievous aspect he had, to put it mildly.”
Likewise, a folder full of small notes from a box in his studio has been bequeathed to show the way he worked.
The Minister of Culture recalled how Rico is part of collective memory and cultural education: «Today we pay tribute to one of our greats […]; “one of the people who has left us the most in literature and philology studies and who taught us to better understand our culture.”
The director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, has recalled three books by Rico that have accompanied him, The picaresque novel and the point of view, Nebrija against the barbarians and The dream of humanismand highlighted: “It is a fundamental reference of our culture that from Barcelona taught us to receive the inheritance of humanism.”
Santiago Muñoz Machado, director of the RAE, has described an unforgettable friend, professor, philologist and editor, “good conversationalist”, “impertinent”, “sentimental and generous”.
After remembering Rico’s “cameos” in several novels by the late writer and academic Javier Marías, he highlighted his great humanistic work, with essential works on medieval and Renaissance literature, on Petrarch, Nebrija, the Song of my Cid and Alfonso Quixote.
Jordi Gracia, who was his student, has remembered Rico as a “human and humanities tsunami”, and has considered him the “first humanist of the 20th and 21st centuries, who undertook the desire to make the humanities part of the cultural menu.” from Spain”.
