MADRID, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- The 95-year-old Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale on Thursday became the winner of the 2018 Miguel de Cervantes Prize for Literature in the Spanish Language, the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport announced.

Born in 1923, Vitale is the last surviving member of a Uruguayan art movement known as the "Generation of 45" and currently lives in the United States. In 2016 she was awarded the Federico Garcia Lorca International Poetry Prize.

The jury who awarded the Cervantes Prize to Vitale said it "recognized a poetical and intellectual trajectory of the first level" and considered the "language she (Vitale) uses to be one of the best known in today's poetry in Spanish".

"It is at the same time both intellectual and popular, universal and personal, transparent and deep," considered the jury.

The Miguel de Cervantes Prize was established in 1975 and was first awarded the following year. It is considered to be "the most prestigious and remunerative award given for Spanish-language literature" by the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Named after the writer of the famous Don Quixote, the Cervantes award looks to recognize the body of work of writers from any Spanish speaking nation and carries a cash prize of 125,000 euros (141,279 U.S. dollars).

Since 1996, the prize had been given to a Spanish writer one year and a Latin American author the following year. However, the laureate of Vitale breaks this trend after the 2017 Prize was given to the Nicaraguan writer and intellectual Sergio Ramirez.