Madrid. Award-winning writer Sergio Ramirez, accused in his native Nicaragua of alleged crimes that include public disorder and which Spain and other countries consider unjustified, denounced being sentenced to “forced exile” by a “dictatorship hostile to books.”
Ramírez, 2017 Cervantes Prize for Literature, took part in an event in Madrid on Monday in memory of his compatriot, the poet Rubén Darío, where he thanked the support provided by the Spanish government and others in his defense of what he described as a political persecution.
The support I received, said the 79-year-old novelist, “makes me better bear the worst circumstance that someone who is already coming back can go through, which is that of forced exile.”
“It’s the hardest anyone can be subjected to,” Ramirez added.