The journalist, television presenter and author Sonsoles Ónega (Madrid, 45 years old) won the Planeta 2023 Award with his work Las hijas de la criada. The finalist of this 72nd edition is Alfonso Goizueta Alfaro with the text La sangre del padre. The award was announced this Sunday evening at a gala dinner in the Oval Hall of the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) in Barcelona, attended by more than a thousand guests. The Planeta Prize is endowed with one million euros for the winning work (more than the Nobel Prize) and 200,000 euros for the finalist.
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Ónega’s novel (which was presented under the pseudonym Gabriela Monte) tells the story of the Valdés, a family of Galician canning entrepreneurs, during much of the 20th century in Galicia and Cuba, with particular emphasis on the struggle of the women of the clan, which was instrumental in the was involved in the creation of his trading empire. Although “a terrible secret will shape her life forever,” the editorial says. “It was an industry that wasn’t fair to women who left their hands cleaning fish and sealing cans. “This novel does them all justice,” said the new winner. This award represents a new milestone in the history of television characters triumphing in the literary world. The same also applies to the Ónega saga: Sonsoles, afternoon star of Antena 3 (Atresmedia, a Grupo Planeta company), is the daughter of the famous journalist Fernando Ónega and sister of the journalist Cristina Ónega.
“It is a difficult novel that I wrote in the midst of many vicissitudes, but to which I was drawn from the beginning: it is the Galicia of my childhood,” added the author. According to her, she wrote the novel over three years in the dressing rooms of two television networks, combining writing, television and motherhood. “Having children and having a professional career is very difficult,” he said.
The finalist surprises with his youth. Alfonso Goizueta Alfaro was born in Madrid in 1999, holds a degree in History and International Relations from King’s College London, and was precocious: at just 17 years old, he published Limitando el poder (Nobel Editions), in which he analyzes the development of European diplomacy between 1871 and 1939. Now, under the pseudonym Luis Parterrío, he is recognized for a story about the adventures of Alexander the Great in his advance into Persia and his slow transformation, battle by battle, into a “tyrant who drags his people to their deaths.” ” “I can’t believe it,” said the author, “it’s my first novel and the fact that it deserves this award is great.” For Goizuerta, Alexander the Great is the first president to use propaganda and considers his novel ” Initiation journey”.
The jury consisted of José Manuel Blecua, Fernando G. Delgado, Juan Eslava Galán, Pere Gimferrer, Carmen Posadas, Rosa Regás and Belén López, director of the Planeta publishing house and secretary of the voting jury. “We noticed that this year there were a lot of historical novels presented and there are also a lot of female characters,” said Eslava Galán at Saturday’s press conference at Llotja in Barcelona. Last year’s winner was Luz Gabás with Lejos de Luisiana, of which the publisher says it sold around 600,000 copies. And the year before, the trio of male writers were nicknamed after a woman: Carmen Mola. The revelation of the pseudonym caused a huge stir. In recent years, in addition to the increase in the amount of the prize (in 2021 it rose from 601,000 euros to the famous million; it started with 40,000 pesetas), there have tended to be more commercial awards, with exceptions, to the disadvantage of more authoritative authors. “literary”.
Guests at the packed gala (with a packed photo opportunity) included political figures such as Yolanda Díaz, Second Vice President of the Government and Minister of Labor and Social Economy; Miquel Iceta, Minister of Culture and Sports; Joan Subirats, Minister of Universities (all acting), or the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni. Also numerous characters from the world of journalism and television; some authors, not so many.
The Planet Dinner is a strange event between elegance and spectacle, with a strange tradition: during the agape, an elimination game is announced between the finalists, like a television competition; Meanwhile, participants can participate by venturing into a pool that will reward them with a stack of books. The faces of the award winners since its inception are also projected onto large screens. At the end of the process, in third place in the elimination tournament, which resisted until the last round together with the two winners, was the work El reencuentro; The author participated under the pseudonym Tintaleve. A story about a Sandinista guerrilla who retreated into the mountains of Madrid and after whose death her daughter returns to take care of her mother’s inheritance, all in times of pandemic restrictions.
The venue, the MNAC’s Oval Hall, is, according to the museum, one of the largest event spaces in Europe, with a majestic vault and a large German organ by the EF Walcker company, inaugurated on July 6, 1929 by Alfred Sittard. It needs a restoration worth three million euros (the equivalent of three Planeta awards). Alfonso XIII opened in this room. the world exhibition in the same year. It is difficult to imagine how it is prepared for more than a thousand people, but the fact is that it is prepared: an army of waiters serves garden salad with Sant Carles prawns, sea bass loin and vegetable rolls with pine nuts and, for example, dessert, chestnut Chiboust with vanilla (the names of the dishes are combined for space reasons). Cava and various wines.
A historical record
In this edition, 1,129 novels were submitted to Planeta, a record in the history of the prize. Compared to the previous year, there are 461 more, a remarkable increase (40%) that the organization attributes to the simplification of the process of presenting the works: this year they could be sent by email, eliminating the effort of printing, binding and mailing omitted. After going through several filters from external and internal readers of the publisher, the ten finalist texts were gradually selected and presented to the jury. As José Creuheras, president of Grupo Planeta and Atresmedia, explained at Saturday’s meeting, it is also possible that a member of the jury saves for the final a text that he knows has been submitted but that is not the one above must have passed the above-mentioned tests. Filter. It can be seen as righting a wrong. Or as an abbreviation.
There are already 45 million people who have read novels that have won the Planeta Prize in its 72 editions, an award that illustrates the main lines of commercial literature in Spanish: there are loyal readers of the Prize every year, and this book it also becomes a traditional gift item. The historical winners include Nobel Prize winners such as Camilo José Cela or Mario Vargas Llosa, but also a large selection of the great names in literature of the last decades such as Juan Marsé, Eduardo Mendoza, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Maruja Torres, Clara Sánchez, Terenci Moix and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Not much is known about the first winner, Juan José Mira with In the Night There Are No Paths 72 years ago. Throughout its history, since 1952, 27,000 writers have tried their luck by sending a manuscript copy. Only a few have achieved fame (and money).
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