Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes Basoalto, worldwide known as Pablo Neruda, was born in Parral municipality, in central Maule region, on July 12, 1904.

At the age of two, he went to live with his father in Temuco, where he spent the rest of his childhood and part of his youth.

On his birthday, the National Library, the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage, and the Foreign Ministry presented a commemorative edition of the book “Crepusculario.”

The date also coincides with the 100th anniversary of “Veinte Poemas de Amor y Una Canción Desesperada” (Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair), a collection of poems that made the author famous at the age of 19 and one of his most famous texts.

The 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Neruda “for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent’s destiny and dreams,” according to the jury.

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