Spanish Government regrets that Vargas Llosa reject offer to preside over the Instituto Cervantes

Spanish Government regretted that the writer Mario Vargas Llosa rejected its offer to chair the Cervantes Institute, and believes that there has been no "haste" in making public the proposal rather than the Nobel Prize for literature communicate its response.

"No reason to hide things." "It's looking for the best for the best seats, and not always conditions allow so," said yesterday the Vice-Chairperson of the Government, Soraya Sáenz Santamaría, in the press conference after the Council of Ministers.

Sáenz de Santamaría claimed for his career, Vargas Llosa was one of the "best" to preside over the Cervantes, but the author "has not been able" to accept the charge.

In the early hours of yesterday Government sources gave the decision of the author of "The feast of the goat" reject the Presidency of the Cervantes, although the Peruvian writer, with Spanish nationality since 1993, reiterated its u000awillingness to continue to work with this agency.

Vargas Llosa, who these days is in London on private trip, has sent a letter to the President of the Government, the conservative Mariano Rajoy, which explains its decision, according to these sources.

This is the second time that Vargas Llosa, 75-year-old declines this responsibility when in 1996 the then President of the Government and also conservative, José María Aznar, offered him lead this institution.

Last Wednesday, the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, José Manuel García-Margallo, called publicly on the writer to accept the proposal, while the owner of education, culture and sports, José Ignacio Wert, ensured that satisfaction had been "very high" If the author had said yes.

From the Socialist Party (PSOE), his spokesman in the Culture Commission of the Congress, José Andrés Torres Mora, yesterday accused the Government of u000ahaving "improvised" on this issue.

"Do not understand such improvisation", said Socialist spokesman, who considered that Garcia-Margallo "came a brilliant play in the struggle of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the education and culture to keep under its control the Instituto Cervantes".

"And is now with that Vargas Llosa prefers, legitimately, to continue to be devoted to the literature," said the Deputy. The Peruvian writer Fernando Iwasaki, good friend of Vargas Llosa, yesterday said to Efe that if the nobel prize "has declined this offer is because nobody better than he knows the real responsibilities would take over as important as this dignity".

"I think that what he has done is absolutely legitimate, responsible and conscious," said Iwasaki.

Luis Goytisolo, novelist and scholar of the Spanish language, believed that "a pity for the Cervantes" that Vargas Llosa not have agreed to be President, u000abut he realizes that this post gives "hard work and many concerns", and the writer "has its own work and their own concerns". "It would have been an ideal President".

Who have found that Vargas Llosa "has acted very well" is the Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina, that yesterday, "with all due respect" toward the Peruvian novelist, wondered what was going to do it in the Cervantes, and attributed this offer to "the politics of gestures" rather than "to serious analysis and work attached to reality".

"Everything was nonsense," said yesterday to Efe Muñoz Molina.

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