Africa-Press – Botswana. The Spanish Civil Guard recovered, on Tuesday, 17th century books by the poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, at an auction in New York, in the United States, revealed yesterday, “Notícias ao Minuto”. Spanish authorities recovered the works as part of an investigation into smuggling.
According to a note from the Civil Guard, two of the three books by the writer, printed in Barcelona and Madrid, at the end of the 17th century, were recovered.
The Instituto Armado highlighted that several literary critics, as early as 1925, considered Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to be “the world’s first feminist”.
The works are valued between US$80,000 and US$120,000, a value that far exceeds €50,000 to “constitute a crime of smuggling goods that are part of the national historical heritage, in accordance with Spanish legislation”, indicates the Civil Guard.
The investigation began in September 2021, when a Spanish citizen put three books by the author for sale at the Swann Aution Galleries New York auction room. Two of the copies had on their initial pages ownership stamps (ex-libris) of the Convento das Carmelitas Calzadas de Santa Ana in the town of Seville, so the Spanish Ministry of Culture took the “appropriate measures to bring this information to the attention of the house of auctions, which decided to suspend the sale”.
According to the Spanish authorities, five volumes of the writer’s work were part of a private collection of a citizen residing in Catalonia which, after his death, were acquired in June 2011 by a well-known bookshop in Madrid. Then they were sold to a Mexican businessman passionate about ancient literature.
After the death of this last businessman, the works were acquired by the American citizen who put them up for sale at auction, where they were located by investigators.
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