The members of the Jury for the 1988 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters, Carlos Luis Álvarez, Luis María Ansón, Manuel Arce, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, Rafael Conte Oroz, Miguel García Posada, Soledad Puértolas, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester and Antonio Vilanova, gathered in Oviedo on the 11th and 12th of April, 1988, under the presidency of Rafael Lapesa and with Emilio Alarcos Llorach acting as secretary, have decided unanimously to grant this award to Carmen Martín Gaite and José Angel Valente Docasar. To José Ángel Valente because his poetry, continually evolving from its initial existential beat to subsequent phenomenological inquiry, is a deep interrogation into the meaning of the world, captured in dense, symbolic language of disturbing beauty, which has made him into one of the finest contemporary Spanish lyricists.