The Pablo Casals Festival

Last years of Pablo Casals

Casals is just 73 years old. He will attend the festival until he is 90, in 1966.

In 1957, he founds the Porto Rico Festival, homage to his native island and that same year, he marries his student, Marta Montańez that seems to communicate him an eternal youth.

He still is in New York, in 1971, for the premiere of his hymn to the United Nations. At the end of the performance, he is awarded the Peace Medal, by hands of the Secretary General U Thant who declares: "Don Pablo, you have dedicated your life to truth, to beauty and to peace. As a man and as an artist, you have embodied the ideals this medal symbolizes."

Back to Porto Rico, he keeps writing, teaching and directing until his last breath. He dies on 22th October 1973, the same year as two famous Ť Pablo ť that never compromised with their ideals: Pablo Picasso, Catalonian at heart and Pablo Neruda, visionary Chilean poet.