The writer and university professor Remedios Zafra Alcaraz (Zuheros, Córdoba, 51 years) has been awarded Tuesday with the National Essay Award 2025 for her work The report. Intellectual work and bureaucratic sadness (Anagram). The award, awarded by the Ministry of Culture, is endowed with 30,000 euros.
The jury has chosen his work for “being a reflection on the objects of late modernity, a tribute to freedom and creative passion and, at the same time, a strong criticism of the conditions of intellectual work performance in the present for its bureaucratic violence, administrative sadness and technological dehumanization,” says the note sent by culture.
In addition, the jury has indicated that this work proposes a “radical revolt, that of the reappropriation of time and culture as reactivators of enjoyment and intellectual enjoyment.” “From the beauty of its poetic prose, Remedios Zafra denunciate, with sharpness, the production mechanisms of the present that, disregarding the human, leads to a self -discipline that slowly kills creative activity and that mainly threaten the health of jobs with the consequent precariousness of the sector,” the statement adds.
Remedios Zafra is also a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). She has been an anthropology professor, gender policies and studies.
Among his works are The invisible loop, Fragile, The enthusiasm. Precariousness and creative work in the digital era, Eyes and capital, (h)adas, A room connected y Netsian.
Con The enthusiasm, Zafra of He had won the Anagrama trial Prize in 2017. It was a work with great impact that, challenging meritocratic ideas, portrays how cultural and intellectual workers (writers, artists, designers, journalists …) accept some forms of “self -exploitation”, with low wages or even free work, forced by “enthusiasm” related to constant exhibition in social networks, the culture of effort, the illusion of effort or the eternal promise of a future of success, at least paid with prestige, Sergio C. Fanjul reports.
The jury has been chaired by Jesús González González, deputy director general for the promotion of the Spanish book, reading and letters, the General Directorate of the Book, Comic and Reading of the Ministry of Culture. As vowels, José María Bermúdez de Castro Risueño has acted, proposed by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE); María Pilar Jiménez Aleixandre, for the Royal Galician Academy / Royal Academy Galega; Nerea Azurmendi Zabaleta, by the Royal Academy of the Basque Language / Euskaltzaindia; Josepa Cucó Giner, by the Institute of Catalan Studies / Institut d’Estudis Catalans; Maria Josep Marín Jordà, by the Valencian Academy of Language / Valencian Academia de la Clengua; Jaime Olmedo Ramos, by the Conference of Rectors of the Spanish Universities (CRUE); María Pilar Fraile Amador (Pilar Fraile), by the Collegiate Association of Writers of Spain (ACE); Emilio Pascual Martín, by the Spanish Association of Literary Critics; Juan Fernando González Urbaneja, by the Federation of Associations of Journalists of Spain (FAPE); Rocío Peñalta Catalán, by the Feminist Research Institute of the Complutense University of Madrid; Marta Segarra Montaner, by the Ministry of Culture, and Alfredo González-Ruibal, author awarded in the previous call.