Allende, 84, claimed the 75th edition of the award in Barcelona with her novel *La hora antes del alba*. The winning work serves as a direct sequel to her celebrated 1982 debut novel, *The House of the Spirits*, returning readers to the multigenerational family saga set against political upheaval in a country inspired by Chile.
Returning to Alba and Pinochet’s Shadow
The newly awarded novel follows Alba, the granddaughter of Esteban Trueba and Clara del Valle, as she attempts to recover from imprisonment and torture during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, according to reporting cited by UA.News. Allende stated at the ceremony that the book is intended to bring the universe of her debut novel to a definitive close.
Speaking before an audience that included Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, Allende compared the win to the Nobel Prize. “I had never entered a competition because I wanted to avoid the embarrassment of coming last,” she said. “At my age, there is very little to lose.” She added that decades of reader inquiries regarding Alba’s ultimate fate finally motivated her to write the sequel.
Pseudonymous Entry and Publishing Stakes
The Premio Planeta is awarded to unpublished manuscripts, allowing participants to submit entries under pseudonyms. Allende entered the competition under the name Luz Ventura with the working title *Los que faltan*. Despite the anonymous submission process, industry experts noted that the author’s distinctive literary voice made her identity difficult to conceal.
“I’d be very surprised if the judges did not know that it was Isabel Allende,” said Prof Duncan Wheeler, chair of Spanish studies at Leeds University and president-elect of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, as reported by The Guardian. Wheeler also observed that while the award is exceptionally lucrative, it occupies a complex institutional standing within the Spanish literary landscape.
The victory represents a major publishing coup for the Planeta Group, as winning rules mandate that the text be published by their imprint. Allende has historically been published by Plaza & Janés, an imprint of Penguin Random House, since the release of *The House of the Spirits*.
Contemporary Parallels and Author’s Warning
Beyond literary circles, Allende drew direct parallels between the historical setting of her novel and the contemporary political climate, noting a resurgence of global authoritarianism. Forced into exile following the 1973 military coup led by Pinochet—who overthrew Salvador Allende, her father’s cousin and Latin America’s first democratically elected Marxist leader—the author reflected on her enduring anxieties.
“Now that I see so many democracies threatened by authoritarianism, extreme nationalism and even fascism, I feel again the fear that led me to leave my country,” Allende said at the ceremony. During Pinochet’s regime, human rights monitors estimate that more than 3,000 people were killed and 40,000 tortured.
Allende remains one of the most widely read figures in Hispanic literature, with over 80 million copies of her books sold worldwide and translations in more than 40 languages. In the runner-up position, Spanish writer and screenwriter Sergio Hernández was awarded €200,000 for his historical novel *La añoranza*.
Reporting source: theguardian.com.