Isabel Allende wins the 75th Premio Planeta with 'La hora antes del alba'

The winning novel

Isabel Allende won the 75th Premio Planeta de Novela on Thursday evening, 15 October, with 'La hora antes del alba', a sequel to 'La casa de los espíritus' that the jury announced at the gala in Barcelona. The prize is worth one million euros. The novel follows Alba, the only family member left alive at the end of the saga, who returns pregnant to the family house after being jailed and tortured by the dictatorship. Allende said she started writing it on 8 January, a date she described as a tradition, and that the book can be read on its own. The work was first entered under the title 'Los que faltan' and the pseudonym Luz Ventura.

The gala at Montjuïc

King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia presided over the ceremony in Pabellón 1 of the Montjuïc fairground and arrived for the literary dinner at about 20.35. Before dinner they posed at the photocall with Constitutional Court president Cándido Conde-Pumpido, Catalan president Salvador Illa, Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni, culture minister Ernest Urtasun and Partido Popular president Alberto Núñez Feijóo, alongside Grupo Planeta president José Creuheras. In his opening speech, the King recalled that José Manuel Lara, former chairman of Grupo Planeta and Atresmedia, created the prize in 1952 to encourage reading in Spain. He also pointed to the record participation in this 75th edition. The King said:

The Queen and I want to congratulate Grupo Planeta on these 75 years of commitment to writers and readers.

The finalist and the jury

Sergio Hernández Carrasco, a Valencian author born in 1994, finished as the finalist with 'La añoranza', a novel that earns 200,000 euros. He had entered it under the title 'Los Caminantes' and the pseudonym Martín Guerrero. Set in Barcelona in 1959, the book follows a young woman who falls in love with a French translator who disappears from her life, and twenty years later she finds a Francoist report linking him to an alleged plan to assassinate Antonio Machado. Hernández said the novel puts Machado's value as a poet back in view. At the press conference, Allende spoke to her fellow prizewinner about their books:

I find it extraordinary that you and I wrote a novel about repression, in an atmosphere without freedom, censored.

Allende added that the two had not known each other's work and that she had no idea who the finalist would be, but that the theme was in the air.

Dictatorship, democracy and Trump

At the press conference on Friday, 16 October, Allende warned against idealizing totalitarian governments, citing Donald Trump as a figure who becomes an idol for a majority despite his human flaws. She said she had lived through dictatorship and knows the damage it can cause:

It seems terrifying to me because I lived through it and I know the damage it can do.

She contrasted Chile's military dictatorship, which could be stopped and made to disappear, with the situation in the United States, where she said that as an older woman she could be deported but has more resources and no young children. She also warned that past mistakes can recur if people are not alert. Allende said literature offers a space and time to analyze what daily news does not, and that her recent novels feature refugees, migrants and displaced people, a hot and cruel topic in the United States.

The prize and its publisher

Allende said she entered because the Premio Planeta is the most important prize in Spanish letters, comparing it to winning the Nobel. Creuheras told the gathering that the prize has sold 47 million books, or 625,000 per edition, and described the book as a treasure. The King cited the record of 1,424 original works submitted from around the world for this edition. The first edition of 'La hora antes del alba' is scheduled to reach bookshops on 4 November with a print run of 210,000 copies.