The Madrid writer Marcos Giralt Torrente has won the Critics’ Prize this Saturday for The illusionistsconsidered by the Spanish Association of Literary Critics as the best narrative book published in 2025. The jury of these awards, which reach their 70th edition, has also awarded the rest of the categories, with Pablo García Casado as the best work of poetry in Spanish, Fernando Castro Paredes and Lorena Souto, in Galician; Amadeu Fabregat and Sebastià Alzamora, in the Catalan language; and Eider Rodríguez and Ane Zubeldia, in the Basque language, according to the ruling announced this Saturday in the Salamanca municipality of Morille. In addition, they have awarded the best foreign language book to The gardener and death, by the Bulgarian writer Gueorgui Gospodínov, published by Impedimenta, with a translation into Spanish by María Vútova; and in Edicions del Periscopi, translated into Catalan by Marc Casals.
Without a financial award, this award is the only one awarded to works in the four official languages in Spain through a jury that in this edition was made up of 21 independent literary critics who work for various media outlets.
In the case of The illusionistsit was the Anagrama publishing house that published this biographical and family work by Giralt Torrente about his maternal grandparents: the also writer Gonzalo Torrente Ballester and Josefina Malvido. The jury highlighted that this introspective work, in which the author mixes real and fictional events, demonstrates an “extraordinary lucidity in reflecting the complex family universe, while revealing his personal maturity and as a creator.” Marcos Giralt Torrente is the author of other works such as Life timewith which he won the National Narrative Award; Paris y The happy beings, inter alia.
In the poetry category, Pablo García Casado has won the prize with the work Each one is a lot of people, published by the Visor publishing house and with which the jury has appreciated that it tries to give voice to everyday people inserted in networks of sociability – work, family – marked by precariousness and crisis. Likewise, the jury highlighted the “splendid management of tension carried out by the author in texts that rely on the format of the prose poem, sometimes close to the micro-story and the cinematographic sequence.”
Amadeu Fabregat has won the prize for narrative in Catalan with the work L’anell del nibelung, published by Proa and which has served to break four decades of literary silence of this writer who presents a chronicle of another return, that of Professor Ernest Millet, protagonist of his work. The jury highlighted his “deliberately neutral language, stripped of local marks and refractory to any superficial roots,” with which Fabregat constructs a novel “of broad significance, which firmly demands the recognition that it deserves.” In the category of poetry in Catalan, Sebastiá Alzamora has won the prize for Augusta Room followed by Mother Tongue, where he proposes “a kind of psychogeography” with places of memory, in the words of the jury, until constructing a “necessary and timely” book.
The Knife Thrower is the work that earned Fernando Castro Paredes ―Editorial Galaxia― the award for narrative in Galician, a thriller “delicious and hard at the same time” for the jury, who sees traces of Pessoa, Faulkner and Eça de Queirós, among other authors. In the case of the writer Lorena Souto, the jury has awarded her collection of poems in Galician Exfoliate from salivapublished by Chan da Pólvora and which shows, in the words of the jury, his literary maturity and his way of inhabiting a rural environment in constant change.
In the case of Eider Rodríguez, winner of the Basque narrative award, she won the award with the work It was all the same hole ―It was all the same hole―where he captures his “extraordinary emotional depth,” in the words of the jury. There are six stories with which “he illuminates the intimate cracks of everyday life: couples in transformation, friendships that fray and vital crises that settle in silence,” the jury stressed. In the case of the poet Ane Zubeldia, the award comes for the work Againstedited by Susa and which represents a “dazzling irruption” for Basque poetry. Based on formal experimentation and sensory force, the body becomes a subject, the origin of language and the territory from which it is written, according to the members of the jury.
The result was announced at a press conference at the CEVMO cultural center with the presence of the president of the Spanish Association of Literary Critics, Fernando Valls, the mayor of Morille, Manuel Ambrosio Sánchez and the Vice-Minister of Cultural Action of the Junta de Castilla y León, Mar Sancho, in addition to all the members of the jury.