"I had never entered a literary contest to avoid coming in last,", asserted Isabel Allende during her acceptance speech for the 75th Planeta Prize, endowed with one million euros, which meant she would leave Penguin Random House and join the group currently presided over by José Creuheras. The news has reopened, once again, the controversy over authors changing publishers, often spurred by literary awards for unpublished works, but also by financial offers that are difficult to refuse (though they do not usually transcend), by the desire to give a new boost to their career by changing houses, and even as a sign of protest.

The AI has received its first Planeta award tonight in Barcelona. But it is not, in this case, a machine capable of generating a novel that has deceived the jury, but the initials of the winning author, Isabel Allende, the best-selling living novelist in Hispanic literature, with more than 80 million copies sold. The 84-year-old Chilean author entered the 75th edition of one of the best-endowed literary awards – surpassed by very little by the Nobel Prize, which offered 1.1 million euros to the winner, Anne Carson– to culminate her extensive career and star in an editorial scandal: Isabel Allende is changing houses.