Pep Prieto, winner of the Prudenci Bertrana Award for a novel about Girona in the 1980s

BarcelonaRosita, the novel with which Pep Prieto has just been proclaimed winner of the 58th Prudenci Bertrana Prize —worth 30,000 euros— is a "tender and overwhelming story about the childhood of a boy in Girona in the eighties who looks at life as if it were a film to understand what hides behind fear, the jury, made up of Montse Barderi, Gemma Lienas, Gerard Quintana, Care Santos and Gloria Gasch.

The journalist and writer born in Girona in 1976 —who regularly talks about series and television on radio programs such as The world on RAC1— has previously published a dozen titles, including Bait (Bridge, 2018), The bad father (Books of Crime, 2020), The eternal woman (Column, 2022) and Little Big Screen: How TV Shows Have Shaped Our Lives (Montserrat Abbey Publications, 2023). With Rosita, Prieto, in a "declaration of love to memory and to the women who save us," makes a change of tone.

Vindicating the pioneers of the Catalan novel and the troubadours

The Prudenci Bertrana is the most highly endowed award at the Girona Literary Awards, which will be presented on September 16. This year, the 46th Carles Rahola Essay Prize, worth 6,000 euros, has been awarded to Half-split women, by Ramon Solsona, which offers a fresh and personal look at Catalan female novelists born between the 19th and 20th centuries who "first encountered the difficulties of an eminently masculine literary system, then the reef of war and Franco's victory, and finally an unjust oblivion." The 48th Miquel de Palol Poetry Prize - also worth 6,000 euros - went to Laia Llobera's new book, SAUR, which "proposes a journey to 12th century Occitania, where Catalonia sinks its roots and spiritual universe." Llobera, in the words of a jury composed of Jaume Coll Mariné, Rosa Font Massot, Anna Gual, Pere Gimferrer and Miquel de Palol –without the author who gives the prize its name–, "reformulates the find clus and the find leu of the troubadours to vividly address themes such as life and death, the afterlife and the need to transform the lives of men."

The fourth of the 2025 Girona Literary Awards is the Ramon Muntaner for young adult novels, worth 6,000 euros, which has been awarded to Murder in Highburn, by Marta Minguella, a mystery story set in an exclusive Irish castle.