Argentina’s Samanta Schweblin on Wednesday won the inaugural Premio Aena de Narrativa Hispanoamericana for her book El buen mal, accepting the award at a ceremony in Barcelona.
Schweblin, 48, is the first recipient of the newly created literary award, which comes with a one-million-euro cheque (US$1.17 million).
The Buenos Aires-born writer, who today lives in Germany, was given the award for her El buen mal, a collection of short stories published by Seix Barral that explores moments in which everyday life is disrupted by subtle but unsettling shifts, revealing underlying tensions and moral ambiguities.
“Today this prize takes its first step by rewarding the exceptional. I am genuinely moved to think that I am receiving an award that is also a recognition of the short story form,” the author said.
“The prize recognises the genre at a time when it feels as though the world is falling apart and yet we insist on celebrating literature,” Schweblin said during her acceptance speech.
She thanked readers who immerse themselves in the stories captured on paper, and criticised President Javier Milei’s government for making budget cuts to the education sector, noting in particular the plight of “the severely underfunded University of Buenos Aires.”
Funded by Aena, the airport operator in which the Spanish state holds a 51 percent stake, the award call drew attention several weeks ago when it burst onto the Spanish-language literary scene.
Finalists for the prize, which aims to recognise annually the best work published in Spanish or translated from Spain’s co-official languages, will receive 30,000 euros, roughly US$35,000.
The finalists were Spain’s Enrique Vila-Matas for Canon de cámara oscura and Marcos Giralt Torrente for Los ilusionistas, Chile’s Nona Fernández for Marciano, and Colombia’s Héctor Abad Faciolince for Ahora y en la hora.
A jury made up of figures from the cultural and literary world, which was chaired by Spanish writer and journalist Rosa Montero, selected the five finalists in March from a pre-selection of narrative works published in 2025.
The creation of the prize, under which Aena has also committed to purchasing thousands of copies of the winning and shortlisted books for distribution among its staff and local administrations, has sparked debate in Spain.
While several voices in the cultural sector welcomed the backing, others questioned the appropriateness of a state-linked transport company entering the literary sphere with such a large prize.
“It is patronage that benefits everyone,” Aena chairman Maurici Lucena said in an interview with Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. “It is a modest investment in the ‘soft power’ of our Hispanic culture across the Americas,” he added.
The prize matches the winner’s purse of the Premio Planeta, which since 1952 has been awarded each October by the Spanish publishing giant to an unpublished novel at a literary gala also held in Barcelona.
Now a powerful commercial platform, the Planeta’s long list of winners includes Nobel Prize in Literature laureates such as Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa and Spain’s Camilo José Cela, as well as other prominent authors including Eduardo Mendoza, Jorge Semprún, Antonio Skármeta and Ana María Matute.
– TIMES/AFP
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