It was no longer about another Planet More because in 2020 the covid forced to suppress the traditional dinner with more than a thousand diners and it was granted at the Palau de la Música with very few attendees. Last Friday the dinner was resumed (only with 600 guests) and it was the 70th anniversary of the award, which in its history has sold 44 million copies. And to leave a mark, the amount of the prize was raised from 600,000 euros to 1 million, which makes it the Literary award with the highest economic endowment in the world. Above the Nobel.
The surprises came with the desserts, after the successive votes of the jury. The award was awarded to an author with a male pseudonym. But when you open the envelope, the author turned out to be Carmen Mola, writer of successful novels in the competitor Alfaguara. Later it was learned that Carmen Mola does not exist, but that it is another pseudonym, not of a woman, but of three well-known television scriptwriters –Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero– who have taken a liking to writing with six hands. The winning work is a historical ‘thriller’ with many murders set in Madrid in 1834, shaken by a cholera epidemic and the death of Ferdinand VII, a prelude to the First Carlist War.
So far, what happened was enough for something very unusual, the ‘Financial Times’ published on its digital cover that the Spanish author compared herself to the well-known Italian Elena Ferrante he was hiding three middle-aged men. The publicity was served, something that the Lara never made disgust despite having awarded nobeles as Mario Vargas Llosa O Camilo José Cela and writers as different as Ana María Matute, José María Gironella, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Jorge Semprún and in 2019 the great ‘thriller’ of Javier Cercas ‘Terra Alta’, which has already had a second part.
But before that something happened that is not usual in the Planet award, which follows the canons of a literary award. President, José Crehueras, in something like a lighthearted speech, after thanking the Lara family -José Manuel Lara Hernández, the founder, and his sons Fernando and José Manual Lara Bosch- the trajectory of the publisher and to say that Planeta is the story of “a marriage with the book & rdquor ;, he wanted to emphasize that for years Planeta has not only been a publisher, which represents a percentage close to 30% of its income. It also has an important participation in Atresmedia and it is expanding in the field of training and universities, which already reaches 20% of its turnover.
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José Crehueras preached confidence in the future. And he is optimistic because, despite the covid, Planeta closed the 2020 financial year with Benefits, has reduced its debt after getting rid of the French Editis, and the sale of books is growing at a strong rate, 15%, not over last year, but over 2019. That is why they are opening new Book Houses. And he even boasted of the ‘share’ of Vicente Vallés in his news.
The icing on the cake was that he asked for a applause for the Kings, present at the event, for their work at the Fundació Princesa de Girona and the Aid to Dogradicción (FAD). The Cercle d’Economia had lamented two days earlier the lack of receptivity of the Catalan Government to private initiatives. Crehueras asked for applause for the Kings. The first publishing house in the Spanish -and Catalan- language has decided to express itself. It is logical, but it also indicates a certain weather change. Catalonia is very plural.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com