Madrid  - Spain's King Juan Carlos on Wednesday presented Argentine poet Juan Gelman, 77, with the Cervantes Prize, regarded as the literature Nobel of the Spanish-speaking world.

The wounds left by Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship "have not yet been closed," but "beat in the underground of society like a cancer without finding peace," said Gelman, a human rights campaigner whose son was killed by soldiers, and whose daughter-in-law disappeared.

The dictatorship drove Gelman into exile in Italy, France and later to Mexico, where he still lives.

Gelman's poetry "has represented a re-encounter, in exile, with his fatherland and deepest roots," the king said at the solemn ceremony in Alcala de Henares, the birthplace of Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes east of Madrid.

The themes of memory, love, pain and death characterize the work of Gelman, who has described being a poet as an "ardent trade." His works published in English include "Unthinkable tenderness" (1997).

The Cervantes Prize, which has been awarded annually since 1976, is worth 90,000 euros (143,000 dollars). (dpa)