A unpublished letter from Antonio Machado about the poem "Las encinas"

Abstract

The text is a comment of a letter sent by the poet Antonio Machado to the director of the magazine La Lectura, Francisco Acebal. It is a letter found in the municipal archive of Cartagena, which contains other documents by important Spanish authors. The topic of the letter is the change of the dedication of the Machado poem “Las Encinas”. Acebal wanted to honor Francisco Giner de los Ríos and wanted that poem to be included with a dedication for him, but Machado answered him with a correct, polite and explanatory refusal. This article adds more information about the Cartagena archive and the other authors whose documents are kept there, as well as information about how the letter has been kept in Acebal's family until today.