On the occasion of the Valencian Book Day 2021, the Historical Library organizes a day of recognition of the figure of Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas. Among the scheduled activities there will be a continuous reading of her work Matèria de Bretanya. You can also visit the traveling exhibition Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas: From the Frontiers of Silence, organized by the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, and see the pieces that make up the “Carmelina Universe”, a small sample of old collection works from the Library Historical.

On November 20, 1490, the first edition of Tirant lo Blanc, the work of the Valencian Joanot Martorell, left the printing house of Nicolau Spindeler. The Historical Library preserves one of the only three known copies of this work, so relevant in Valencian literature and culture that in 2000 the Generalitat instituted this day as Valencian Book Day.

For the third consecutive year, the Historical Library wants to celebrate this day with a continuous reading in the Duque de Calabria room of the University of Valencia. This year, the author chosen by open vote has been Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas, who this year has been named by the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua Writer of the year 2020-2021, coinciding with the centenary of her birth.

Throughout the day more than one hundred participants will read fragments of her famous work Matèria de Bretanya. In the book, winner of the 1975 Andròmina Prize, the author collects, with attractive and careful poetic prose, her childhood memories of her in Altea shortly before the Civil War.

The Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua has collaborated in this activity with the transfer of the traveling exhibition Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas: From the Frontiers of Silence, which during the Carmelina Year has visited different locations. The exhibition can be visited throughout the day.

In addition, the Historical Library has sought to accentuate a facet of the quite unknown but equally distinguished author: her passion for Valencian medieval history and literature. For her research on historical figures such as Jaime I the Conqueror, Pere el Ceremonioso or San Vicente Ferrer, the writer would be involved in works that make up a particular “Carmelina Universe”. The Historical Library will exhibit a selection of these original works, which can also be consulted digitized in the Somni Digital Library.

The public will also be able to contemplate the only known copy of the incunabula Lo somni de Joan Joan by Jaume Gassull, a Valencian satirical poet to whom Carmelina dedicated one of her works. The incunabula, printed in Valencia by Lope de la Roca in 1497, is part of the exhibition 100 anys fent llibres, an exhibition in commemoration of the centenary of Publications of the University of Valencia that can be visited in the Duque de Calabria room.

All activities are open and free of charge and will take place on November 17, 2021 in the Duque de Calabria room of the Historical Library (La Nau Cultural Center), from 10.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. During the day, you can enjoy some musical pieces performed by the members of the Orchestra of the University of Valencia.