Juan Marsé, Camilo José Cela, Ana María Matute, Eduardo Mendoza. Four great names in Spanish literature united by the same bond: having won the Planeta Prize. This Thursday, nine novels aspire to join that historical list of winners in an edition that celebrates the 75th anniversary of the contest in Barcelona. Beyond literary prestige, the winner will take home one million euros, an endowment that places the Planeta among the best-paid awards in Spanish letters —a distinction it shares since this year with the recently created Aena Prize for Hispano-American Narrative, but which recognizes already published works, unlike the Planeta, reserved for unpublished novels—.
The nine finalists vying for the award have been selected from the 1,424 original works submitted, a record number in the 75-year history of the prize. Although usually ten novels reach this phase, one of the selected works has been excluded from the competition after it was discovered that it had already been published, thus failing to comply with the rules of the contest, which require works to be unpublished (in addition to passing quality controls designed to detect the possible use of artificial intelligence, which would disqualify them from among the selected works).
Among the finally nine finalist novels covering different genres, historical narrative once again occupies a prominent place, in line with a recurring trend in the Planeta Prize. In addition, several of them have been submitted under a pseudonym, which adds even more anticipation to the award, by revealing the mystery of the authorship of several of the works. In fact, it would not be the first time that the contest has provided such a surprise: in 2021, Carmen Mola turned out to be, in reality, the pseudonym of three writers —Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero—, who won the prize for La bestia in a revelation that garnered much of the attention during the gala.
Two mysteries that will be solved this Thursday, October 15. Although the date has been consolidated in the award's calendar, the gala premieres a new venue: it will be held in pavilion 1 of the Montjuïc venue of Fira de Barcelona, instead of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, the usual home of the ceremony since 2019 —with the exception of the 2020 gala, which was held in a more reduced format than usual due to the pandemic—. The change of location responds, according to the organization, to the high demand for attendance. The literary dinner will also be presided over by the Kings of Spain and will bring together representatives from the world of culture, economy, and civil society.
In addition to this novelty, the 75th edition of the Planeta Award incorporates two new names to the jury responsible for choosing the winning novel. Both know the contest from within: Paloma Sánchez-Garnica, finalist in 2021 and winner in 2024 with Victoria, and Javier Sierra, who won the award in 2017 with El fuego invisible. The two replace José Manuel Blecua, who passed away in May and whom the publishing house wanted to honor at the presentation press conference at the Palau de la Música Catalana, and Juan Eslava Galán, who was part of the jury for seventeen years. The committee is completed by Luz Gabás, Pere Gimferrer, Eva Giner, Carmen Posadas, and Belén López, director of Editorial Planeta and secretary with a vote.
Beyond media recognition, the Planeta Award also represents an important commercial showcase for its winners. According to José Creuheras, president of Grupo Planeta, since the creation of the contest in 1952, more than 47 million copies of the awarded works have been sold, with an approximate average of 625,000 books per edition. “The award was born with a dual vocation: to encourage reading, but also to ensure that writers could live from literature,” Creuheras recalled. An aspiration that, he argues, remains valid more than seven decades later.
History, suspense, and memory: the nine finalist novels for the Planeta Award
From 15th-century Castile to the conflicts that marked the 20th century, the nine finalist novels span different eras through stories interwoven with family secrets, traumas, past wounds, and the search for one's own identity. Historical fiction once again occupies a prominent place, in line with a usual trend in the Premio Planeta, although the selection also includes police thrillers, espionage, and contemporary stories, which explore themes such as mental health or personal relationships.
Although the nine finalist novels are very different from each other and, being unpublished works, their content is only known in depth by the jury, Luz Gabás has pointed out a common concern in many of them: “finding peace, healing wounds and building a better life”. This diversity of stories is also reflected in the origin of the originals. The majority, 778 of the 1,424 works submitted, come from Spain, although the contest also has significant participation from South America —with 383— and from countries such as Mexico and the United States. 77 novels have been received from the province of Barcelona.
Several of the finalist novels travel to the past. This is the case of La sombra de Isabel, by Pedro Regalado Rodríguez, which recreates the life of Isabella the Catholic and shows how the future queen learns to govern and discovers the personal cost involved in exercising power. La noche de los faroles, signed by Mencía Salazar (pseudonym) sets the action in 1780, in the midst of the American Revolutionary War. In this naval espionage novel, a Spanish spy obtains the signal codes of a British convoy, information that Admiral Luis de Córdova will use to prepare an ambush on the high seas.
The past also holds difficult-to-unearth secrets in Los Caminantes, by Martín Guerrero, another pseudonym. The story begins in Barcelona in 1959, when a young woman falls in love with a French translator who disappears without a trace. Two decades later, a report from the Francoist Social Brigades falls into her hands and links the man to a supposed plan to assassinate Antonio Machado. In Los que faltan, presented by Luz Ventura, also under a pseudonym, political violence fully erupts into family intimacy. After being imprisoned and tortured by a dictatorship, a young woman returns home pregnant. There she must confront the aftermath of what she experienced and try to rebuild her life.
The fight against oppression takes another form in La mujer desnuda sale a las once, by Bernardo Galeana (pseudonym). Set in 1970s Mexico, this work follows a young Zapotec artist who joins the guerrilla convinced that armed struggle can change things. However, he soon becomes disillusioned with armed struggle and opts for painting as a form of resistance. Also in the same vein of historical novel but influenced by fiction is El jardín de Lennon, by Jorge Herrero, another pseudonym, in which four journalism students passionate about the Beatles investigate the existence of a supposed secret son of John Lennon, an adventure that soon leads to deceptions and betrayals.
In addition to the historical novel, there is also space for the thriller, another of the great genres in the history of the Planeta Award, with examples such as Letraherido, by Pepe M. Carrascosa, one of the few candidates who presents under his real name. In his novel, literature and mystery are mixed through a killer who seems to use books to attract his victims and who, in addition to a trail of blood, also leaves next to the corpse a book from a book exchange network, known as bookcrossing.
And among those selected, there is still room for other themes such as the search for roots, a theme seen in Alba Naranja, by Tamsilt El Hayani (pseudonym). In the novel, its protagonist, after discovering that she was a victim of a stolen baby network in Barcelona, investigates her past until she finds a lineage of women of Turkish origin settled in Morocco. Likewise, emotional wounds are also the focus of other selected novels such as Kintsugi o tres almas rotas, by Hugalma de la Sierra (pseudonym), where three people with different crises coincide in the same therapeutic workshop inspired by the Japanese art of repairing vases with gold, a technique that not only allows not to forget the scars but even to highlight them.
Among these nine selected works, seven of them have been presented under a pseudonym, so the identity of a good part of the authors who aspire to join this historical list of winners shared by great names in literature will be a mystery until the verdict. This mystery adds anticipation to the gala, although it does not allow anticipating whether there will be any recognized names among the award winners, as happened in its previous edition, where Juan del Val, journalist, writer and television collaborator, won the millionaire award for Vera, una historia de amor.