The Paradela City Council has opened the deadline to participate in the XXXII edition of the Manuel Oreste Rodríguez López Literary Contest, a call that includes a specific category dedicated to the Camino de Santiago and that will distribute prizes of up to 1,000 euros.
The Camino de Santiago once again becomes literary inspiration.
Since last October 1, the deadline to participate in the XXXII edition of the Manuel Oreste Rodríguez López Literary Contest, organized by the Paradela City Council in memory of the writer and Favorite Son of the municipality.
The call will remain open until next November 30 and contemplates three different modalities: narrative, poetry and a specific category dedicated to Camino de Santiago.
A category dedicated to the Camino
The Jacobean modality admits both stories and poems.
The objective is to highlight the importance of the Camino de Santiago in Paradela, a municipality deeply linked to the route and the passage of pilgrims.
This opens the door to very different stories.
Personal experiences.
Stories of pilgrims.
Stories inspired by villages, encounters, hospitality or landscape.
Poems born during a stage.
Or completely fictional texts that have the Camino as a setting.
Original and unpublished works
The works must be original and unpublished and they cannot have been previously awarded in other contests.
They can be presented both in Galician as in Spanish.
The contest thus maintains a format open to different profiles of authors, from experienced writers to people who simply want to turn an experience of the Camino into a story or a poem.
Prizes of up to 1,000 euros
The winner of each of the three modalities will receive a prize of 1,000 euros.
In addition, in the categories of narrative and poetry, a second prize will be awarded, endowed with 500 euros.
The jury may also grant other recognitions if it considers that there are works that deserve it.
How to participate
The works can be sent by postal mail to the Paradela City Council or by email.
The term will end on November 30, so those who want to participate still have several weeks to prepare their texts.
The call may be especially attractive for pilgrims who have experienced a special story during their Camino and want to transform it into literature.
El Camino is also written
When we think about the Camino de Santiago we usually do so in kilometers, stages and landscapes.
But the Camino is also counted.
For centuries it has generated diaries, chronicles, poems, letters and personal stories.
Each pilgrim observes different things.
The same stage can become a completely different story depending on who walks it.
That is why initiatives like this have special value.
They allow us to preserve experiences that, otherwise, perhaps would remain only in the memory of the person who lived them.
Paradela and its link with the Jacobean route
Paradela is part of that Galician territory in which the Camino is not just a tourist route.
It is landscape.
History.
Local economy.
Meeting.
And memory.
The continuous passage of pilgrims has for years left small stories that rarely appear in the great statistics of the Camino.
A conversation in a house.
A rainy night.
An unexpected meeting.
A person who offers help.
A farewell.
Everything can become literature.
An opportunity to tell your Way
Perhaps this is precisely the most interesting part of the contest.
There is no need to write about great events.
The Camino is full of small stories.
Sometimes a good story starts with something as simple as a person sitting on a bench, a backpack that's too heavy, or a conversation with a stranger.
Literature allows us to turn those moments into something that can remain long after the pilgrimage ends.
That is why this call can be a good opportunity for those who have been thinking for some time:
“Someday I will write what happened to me on the Camino.”
Maybe that day is now.
