[dropcap letter="F"]
It was an atypical evening. Nothing like the lavish dinners with over a thousand guests that the Planeta Award has accustomed us to. The pandemic forced yesterday's awards ceremony to be limited to a hundred people, albeit in an exceptional setting, the Palau de la Música Catalana, which hosted the event for the first time, always on October 15, coinciding with Saint Teresa's day in homage to the wife of the family group's founder.
[subscribe_newsletter_esp]
Next year, the Planeta Award will celebrate its 70th anniversary, a milestone that the publishing group hopes to celebrate in style if the pandemic can be left behind. "I am sure it will be so," predicted Planeta's president, José Creuheras, during his speech at an event also attended by the Vice President of the Government, Carmen Calvo; the Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau; the First Deputy Mayor, Jaume Collboni, and the seven members of the jury.
The brand new winner, the Basque writer Eva García Sáenz de Urturi, prevailed over the 582 works competing in this edition, with Aquitania, a novel set in the Middle Ages and inspired by the story of the Duke of Aquitaine, who died poisoned on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. His daughter, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the heiress of the richest county in France, devises "a suicidal plan" to avenge her father and make the King of France pay.
According to the author of the bestselling trilogy La Ciudad Blanca, Aquitania is a medieval thriller with which she also wants to pay homage to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. The winner of the Planeta Award 2020 assured after receiving the award that "the world of culture will survive this pandemic."
This year's Planeta is 100% female, as the Barcelona journalist and television presenter Sandra Barneda was the finalist with Un océano para llegar a ti (An Ocean to Reach You), an "intimate novel that speaks of hope and how death can transform us." It is set in the Sierra de Gredos, where a series of events unfold over 49 days. Barneda could not be physically present at a ceremony marked by safety distances, masks, and hydroalcoholic gels, but she did intervene telematically.
The world of culture will survive this pandemicThe evening began with a tribute to the late Carlos Ruiz Safón, for whom Planeta was an editor for more than 20 years. Pianist Marta Muñóz performed one of the pieces the writer composed forThe Shadow of the Wind, while images of Ruiz Safón were shown and some of his phrases were recalled: "Books are mirrors; one only sees in them what one carries within."
Creuheras asks for an aid plan for booksellers
The winner of the Planeta Prize will receive 601,000 euros and the finalist 150,250 euros. These are very significant figures, but the most relevant aspect of winning the Planeta is that the winning works automatically become bestsellers. "The best thing that can happen to literature is to be popular, and with the Planeta you manage to be significant, to be relevant; any writer should dream of winning this prize," said the winner of the 2019 edition, Javier Cercas.
According to Creuheras, the Planeta has sold more than 43 million copies, which means that in every Spanish home there are, at least, two books that have won this prize. The senior executive of the publishing sector asked Vice President Carmen Calvo for "a real aid plan for booksellers," whom he defined as "the soul that this society needs" after thanking them for "having done everything" during the pandemic to continue selling books and spreading culture.
Add The New Barcelona Post as your preferred Google source for free
Stay informed with the latest news.
