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November 24, 2025

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This poetic-musical tribute to the 90th anniversary of Justo Alejo's birth coincides with the exhibition of "Manuscript Treasures IX Justo Alejo (1935-2025)," which the Jorge Guillen Archive-Foundation is exhibiting this November at the Library of Castilla y León.

In this celebratory context, the following people, linked to the poetic group PerVersos of Valladolid, formed as Colectivo Alaciar : Tomás de las Heras Alonso, Francisco Javier Soto Antolín, Soledad González Vaquero, Atilano Sevillano, Toñi Arranz, Nina Diez Gato, Eusebio Aguilera, Simón Saludes, Marimi Jimenez, Jose Luis España, Carlos, Alberto Jambrina, Eugenio Llorente and Miguel Alejo will perform their poems, some set to music by the musician Simón Saludes.

The PerVersos poetry group, with 10 years of poetic activity in Valladolid, meets every Wednesday for an open mic session starting at 8:30 pm at Bar Gondomatic on Gondomar Street. They will pay tribute to the poet from Sayago by reading poems from his numerous collections: the first of these in the "Relieve Cordel" format, which Domingo Rodríguez Martín, founder of the Relieve bookstore, along with his brothers Pablo (Blas Parajero) and Pepe, published in Valladolid during the Franco regime in the 1950s and 60s.

This is an opportunity to revisit the poems, listen to the music of Simón Saludes, and explore the fascinating figure of a still little-known poet with a long and varied career, both in his human dimension and through the avant-garde/visual influences of the poet Francisco Pino and the French surrealists and dadaists, as well as the ethical/social poetry of Cesar Vallejo.

Justo Alejo exemplifies the era of developmentalism under the previous regime and the post-war migration from the countryside to the city, reflecting the contradictions in the life of a poet and a "brigadier." Justo, a free man amidst a military organization like Franco's army.

Justo Alejo is a poet who is not well enough known. We have come to read his poetry, as the prologue to the book Alaciar states.

"Another book of poems

Who will read it?

Well then

"US

IT

WE READ."

We read, recite, sing, and celebrate Justo, this social and avant-garde poet, in our consciousness, for him and his contemporaries, this tribute on the 90th anniversary of his birth.

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Justo Alejo Arenal, a poet from Sayago, born in Formaríz (Zamora) in December 1935, actively participated with the group of intellectuals and artists who frequented the back room of the secondhand bookstore "Relieve" on Cánovas del Castillo street in Valladolid, where he lived for 12 years from 1954 to 1966, while serving in the Villanubla Air Base, and having several postings in Valladolid and Madrid where he reached the rank of brigadier in the air force, dying on January 11, 1979, after falling from a window on the sixth floor of the Ministry of the Air in Madrid.

In Valladolid, Justo Alejo made contact with the poet Francisco Pino, with artists such as Felix Cuadrado Lomas, Francisco Sabadell, and writers such as Fernando Zamora, Ramón Torío, a doctor with whom he formed a great friendship.

The poet Justo Alejo, son of Rosa Alejo and "unknown," despite his humble origins, always aspired to cultivate himself, study, and prosper professionally and intellectually. As a child, he wrote poems and other works which he performed with his friends in the streets of the town.

In order to build a future for himself, he left the Sayago region to study first in Leon, then in Valladolid where he enlisted in the Spanish army as a volunteer and was assigned to aviation in Villanubla. He pursued a military career, reaching the rank of Sergeant Major in the Ministry of the Air in Madrid.

He combined his life in the army with poetry and writing for newspapers and magazines.

His work included contributions to the newspapers El Norte de Castilla and Triunfo , as well as the magazine Poesía . He also undertook sociological and ethnographic research in rural areas along the Spanish-Portuguese border, which he was unable to complete due to his untimely death. His studies included degrees in Education and Philosophy in Valladolid, and Sociology and Political Science in Madrid. In Valladolid , he frequented the literary circle at the Librería "Relieve" bookstore, its chapbooks, and the "Grupo Simancas," and he established relationships with poets and artists such as Francisco Pino, Santiago Amón, Domingo Criado, Cuadrado Lomas, Francisco Sabadell, Fernando Zamora, Fernando Santiago, Gabino Gaona, and Ramón Torio. Poets such as Rosa Chacel and Vázquez Montalbán, among other writers, have written about him.

His literary legacy forms part of the Jorge Guillén Foundation's holdings, donated by his widow, Silvia Herberg, with whom he had a son. Currently, his brother-in-law, filmmaker Miguel Herberg, is working to open a house dedicated to Justo Alejo in Sayago, and to produce a film about the poet, projects that are still pending.

Justo Alejo Arenal died at the age of 44. His work, preserved and published in two volumes by the Jorge Guillén Foundation , consists of the following titles:

1957. Poems as unconscious as slum flowers (posthumous)

1959. Wastelands waiting. Valladolid chapbooks.

1960. A certain biography, Arenales (poetry installments). Vallisoletanos Cordel Sheets.

1962. Mules (engravings by Félix Cuadrado Lomas), Valisoletano Cordel Sheets.

1962. From this stick, Valisoletan Cordel Sheets.

1969. SERojos lunares (nimbos). Trajegos de Cordel Valisoletanos.

1971. Monumental Sales (sad clichés). Valisoletan Chapbooks.

1974. Offprint from the same. Valladolid, April.

1976. They are net. Valladolid, April.

1976. TODAY Disenchantment WASHES MORE WHIAAANCO.

1978. Just a few words. Book of Hours and Holes.

1979. Poems 1959-1965 (Anthology) Valladolid, Sayagueses Cordel Papers, June.

1980. The scent of the wind. Madrid, Endymión Ayuso.

1994. Marbella between a thousand rivers, Jorge Guillén Foundation.

2005. Wandering Prose, Semuret.

This bibliographic collection has been researched by Manuel Ángel Delgado de Castro (UNED) and Miguel Alejo Alcántara (University of Almería), and other scholars are beginning research into the poet's work and context. In 2003, Carlos Fruhbeck Moreno published Justo Alejo: una escritura de vanguardia y compromiso ( Castilian and Leonese Academy of Poetry/Editorial Azul/ Junta de Castilla y León, Valladolid). In 2005, Prosa errante (Wandering Prose) was published (Zamora, Editorial Semuret), and in 2014, El Norte de Castilla dedicated its literary supplement , La Sombra del Ciprés, to him.

On the poet's 80th birthday, commemorative events were held. In August 2023 and 2024, a group of writers and poets from Valladolid and Zamora took an interest in revitalizing his figure and work, holding a poetry reading in the city of Zamora , as well as in the towns of Fornillos de Fermoselle, where poems from his books " Alaciar " and " El aroma del viento " were read, and in Formariz de Sayago, where poems dedicated to his life and work were read.