The City of Salamanca Novel and Poetry Awards 2025 The winners have been named. The Salamanca City Council has announced and officially presented the awards at an institutional event that brought together authorities, jury members, and representatives from the publishing industry.
In this call for entries, the distinction in The novel has been written by José Antonio López Nevot for his work Leonor and the viceroys, Whereas the poetry prize has gone to Mercedes Escolano López thanks to the poetry collection entitled Sun and shadowBoth awards reinforce the role of Salamanca as one of the most active literary centers within the Spanish and European cultural landscape.
An institutional event focused on literary creation
The award ceremony took place at the Reception Hall of the Salamanca City HallThe ceremony was presided over by the mayor, Carlos GarcÃa Carbayo, who was in charge of handing the diplomas and corresponding financial awards to the winners.
The councilman was accompanied by those present members of the juries of both competitionsas well as the editors responsible for publishing the winning works. Asunción Escribano attended on behalf of the poetry committee, while José Antonio Cordón spoke on behalf of the novel committee, accompanied by the editors. Eduardo Riestra y Jesus Egido, linked respectively to the narrative and poetry prizes.
The mayor emphasized the council's commitment to culture, highlighting that these awards have become a visibility platform for authors from Spain and numerous other countries who find in Salamanca a first-rate literary meeting point.
During the ceremony, the speeches of the award winners emphasized the literature as a space of personal resistance and collective reflectionBoth López Nevot and Escolano expressed their gratitude for the recognition and shared some details about the origin of their books, linked to intense life experiences and a critical view of reality.
The ceremony also served to highlight the established nature of these awards, which have been growing in media coverage and international participation, until it became one of the most important literary competitions in the Spanish language organized by a local administration.
XIX Novel Prize: power, memory and female voice
The nineteenth edition of the City of Salamanca Novel Prize The winner has been José Antonio López Nevot, recognized for his work Leonor and the viceroysThe author receives an endowment of 15.000 Euros and the guarantee of publication and distribution of the novel through the publisher Wind Editions, specializing in quality storytelling.
The novel competition has registered a remarkable response: entries have been received 599 originalswith a majority of authors residing in Spain, who submitted 346 manuscripts. The remaining works come from thirty different countries, which confirms the international reach of the award.
Among the countries with the highest participation are Argentina, with 94 novelsThis is followed by Colombia (38), Mexico (19), Venezuela (18), and, in smaller numbers, the United States and Chile, each with ten entries. This map of origins reflects the interest the call for entries generates in the Spanish-speaking world and in Spanish-speaking communities in other territories.
The decision regarding the narrative category was made at a meeting held on September 24The date on which the jury examined the finalist works. The committee was chaired by Luis Alberto of Cuenca and formed by Emilio Pascual, José Antonio Cordón, Carmen Posadas, Celia Aramburu and the editor Eduardo Riestra, all of them figures with a long career in the world of letters.
According to the jury's assessment, Leonor and the viceroys embodies the meticulous historical recreation And through a literary approach that combines documentary rigor with careful and evocative prose. The novel delves into the inner workings of viceregal power, ambition, and the tensions between private life and public space, placing at its center a highly complex female protagonist.
Leonor's character is portrayed as a figure who oscillates between imposed obedience and resistance, becoming symbol of the struggle for autonomy in a patriarchal environmentIn contrast to her, the viceroys and other male figures represent different faces of power, its contradictions and its shadowy areas, allowing for a contemporary reflection on gender, authority and identity.
The novel combines a tone of historical chronicle with elements of fictionWith detailed scenes and vocabulary that evokes the period, yet remains accessible to a contemporary audience, the result is a work of remarkable cultural depth, recognized by the jury as an outstanding contribution to the landscape of historical fiction in Spanish.
The background of "Leonor and the Viceroys" and the career of López Nevot
Own José Antonio López Nevot He explained that the genesis of his novel lies in a fortuitous documentary discovery in the Archive of the Royal Chancery of Granadawhere she found references to the story of Leonor Manrique de Lara. That discovery sparked her interest in reconstructing, somewhere between research and fiction, the life of a woman facing an inflexible power system.
The plot is set in the middle Spanish Golden Age It presents a family divided into legitimate and illegitimate branches. When the legitimate branch dies out, the descendants considered illegitimate come to the forefront of the narrative, and one of them even becomes viceroy. Against this backdrop, the novel describes how Leonor attempts to break free from male dominance in an environment ruled by patriarchal norms.
The author plays with the contrast between historical reality and literary construction, giving Leonor a voice that seeks to vindicate the right to decide about their own lifeThis approach connects with current debates on the representation of women in history and literature, offering a reading that challenges today's reader without losing its roots in the context of the past.
Regarding his professional profile, López Nevot is Professor of History of Law and Institutions He teaches at the University of Granada and presides over the Academy of Fine Arts in the same city. He also serves as vice-president of the Andalusian Association for UNESCO and is a member of the Spanish Association of Law and Literature, demonstrating his dual connection to both the legal and literary worlds.
His creative career includes the poetry collection Island Architectcollections of stories such as Templar and other stories y Not all verses have heroesas well as the novel The Ginkgo Garden and a biographical essay on Magdalena de Bobadilla, a female figure from the circle of Philip II's court. This background is reflected in the documentary solidity and literary sensitivity that the jury highlighted in the award-winning work.
XXVIII Poetry Prize: «Sun and shadow» and a massive edition
In the realm of poetry, the twenty-eighth edition of the City of Salamanca Poetry Prize has honored the writer from Cádiz Mercedes Escolano López for his book Sun and shadowThe author has received a financial grant of 8.000 Eurosand his work will be published and distributed by the publishing house Cordelia Kingdom, a leading label in the field of poetry and short stories.
The response to the poetry competition has even surpassed that of the novel competition: 868 poetry collections from thirty countriesSpain leads the list with 517 originals, followed by Argentina (87), Colombia (58), Mexico (34), Cuba (26), Chile (20), Peru (18), Venezuela (12) and the United States, with ten collections submitted.
The jury for this category also met on September 24, under the presidency of the poet Antonio ColinasThe committee was completed with Asunción Escribano, César Antonio Molina, FermÃn Herrero, José Luis Puerto, Juan Antonio González Iglesias and the editor Jesús Egido, all of them prominent names in the Spanish literary scene.
The poems Sun and shadow was elected by unanimity of the juryThe critic praised her ability to translate a complex life experience into writing, combining introspection, cultural references, and a particularly attentive perspective on the female condition. The author has acknowledged that the book stems from a difficult personal period, marked by withdrawal and the need to find refuge in reading.
Mercedes Escolano: a well-established voice in Spanish poetry
Mercedes Escolano López She has a long career in the fields of poetry and academia. She holds a degree in Hispanic Philology from the University of Cádiz and completed doctoral coursework at the University of Seville. Thanks to scholarships from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Camões Institute, she pursued studies in Portuguese Language and Culture and translation in Lisbon.
For more than three decades he has served as Teacher of Spanish Language and Literature in Andalusian secondary schoolsShe combined teaching with writing poetry and working on various publishing projects. In 1990, she received a Literary Creation Grant from the Ministry of Culture, institutional support that solidified her commitment to writing.
Escolano has co-directed the magazine Octaviana, linked to the University of Cádiz, and has been at the head of the Seven Seas collection of poetic broadsides, promoted by the Provincial Council of Cádiz, thus contributing to the dissemination of emerging and established poetic voices.
His bibliography includes a extensive list of titles, entre ellos The bacchantes, Feline calm and waves, The tuna trap, Antinomy, Private, Stelae, Real and imaginary, Bad times, You will not love, Coffee and tobacco, Islands, Collected Games (Poetry 1984-2004), Ulysses' bathtub, Fascination of the Atlantic, Hotel room (in collaboration with Josefa Parra), Pleasures and lies, Beauty, Wild Garden y Fifty epigrams.
Much of his work has been translated into several languages Her work appears in numerous anthologies, both in Spain and abroad. This international presence reflects the positive critical reception her poetry has received, characterized by a combination of lyricism, restrained irony, and attention to the everyday.
The international dimension and the role of Salamanca on the literary map
The participation figures for this edition show that Salamanca City Novel and Poetry Awards They have ceased to be a local competition and have become a a leading figure in the Spanish-language literary scenewith particular importance in Spain and in numerous Latin American countries.
The balanced presence of authors from Europe and America, with special prominence of Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, Chile and PeruIt reflects a transnational literary community that finds in Salamanca a symbolic place from which to engage with tradition and the challenges of the present.
From a European perspective, the award is presented as a platform to consolidate creative careers that already have a track record, as is the case of López Nevot and Escolano, but also to discover new voices that aspire to be in the most visible publishing sphere.
The City Council has insisted that the continuation of the award is part of a long-term cultural strategy that combines the promoting reading with direct support for authors through a significant financial endowment and the professional publication of the winning works. This model attempts to balance symbolic recognition and material support.
For readers, the inclusion of award-winning titles in prestigious publishing catalogs makes them more accessible. arrival in bookstores and libraries throughout Spain and other countriesThis helps the winning stories and verses to transcend the local sphere and become part of a much wider reading circuit.
With the works Leonor and the viceroys y Sun and shadowThe Salamanca City Novel and Poetry Awards consolidate a line that combines literary demands, historical perspective, and reflection on the female experienceAt the same time, they reinforce Salamanca's position as a city committed to literary creation and to dialogue between authors, institutions and readers on both sides of the Atlantic.
