Núria Cadenes wins the Proa prize with a story of resilience and kindness

BarcelonaAt the beginning of Who saves a life, with which Núria Cadenas (Barcelona, ​​1970) has won the seventh Proa Prize. A priest, Father Joan, is beaten by a former member of the Gestapo. They are in Organyà, inside the church, in 1950. The novel then flashes back to the previous decade, to the height of World War II, when the Pyrenean border became a land of passage and refuge. Father Joan, the son of a peasant family, collaborates with other resistance fighters—among them Melitón, Rosita, and Isabel—helping Jews, Allied airmen, and fugitives from Nazism to cross the border. This is the starting point of a story in which clandestine actions are intertwined with the moral dilemmas they can entail. "At certain historical moments, collective salvation depends on the actions of a few just and courageous people. Doing good, silently and riskily, as the characters in the novel do, demands total sacrifice," explains Xavier Pla, spokesperson for the jury. "Núria Cadenes has written a novel that is truly unforgettable."

"I had a great-uncle who was a priest in Puigcerdà. He was the one who told me, when I was little, to take my First Communion, but I didn't believe in God and he accepted my decision. His story during the years of the early Franco regime and World War II has haunted me for years," says Cadenes. "He, the priest Juan in the book, has haunted me until now. This great-uncle built an escape network that helped save hundreds of people persecuted by fascism."

Networking and helping each other

The author acknowledges that if she had "invented" the network of characters in the book, the story would have seemed even more unbelievable. "All the protagonists, in the toughest moments, act according to what they believe is right, and what they did wasn't easy, but they simply did it," she adds. "Some of them disappeared without a trace, and it's a shame that their heroism hasn't been recorded." Cadenes believes that "although the novel takes place in the 1940s, what it raises is absolutely relevant today." "Perhaps they want us to be navel-gazing, to only look at ourselves. I think it's more important to build networks and help each other," she says.

As is typical in Núria Cadenes's novels, the story unfolds through an omniscient narrator who approaches the multiple perspectives of the characters and allows himself to be influenced by the particularities of the Cerdanya language. The boundaries between reality and fiction also blur. "These are the interests that have guided me in recent years," he admits. This can be seen in books such as Guillermo (Amsterdam, 2020) and The banker (Editions of 1984, 2013). "Even when I tell terrible things, I always try to narrate them with restraint and in a stylized way," he says.

Who saves a life This is the second book that Cadenes will publish in 2025 – the first was the stories ofIn the flesh and blood (Ara Llibres, 2025)—and the second novel that Cadenes publishes with Proa: she debuted in 2023 with Tiberius Caesar, Set during the Roman Empire and starring an emperor whom the author wanted to portray "in all his complexities and darkness." Created in 2019, the Proa Prize, which comes with a €40,000 award, has recognized authors such as Martí Domínguez, Laura Gost, Francesc Serés, and Eva Comas-Arnal in previous editions.