The Francisco Umbral Foundation has awarded the fourteenth Francisco Umbral Prize for Book of the Year 2024 to Fernando del Rey and Manuel Álvarez Tardío for the essay ‘Crossfire. The spring of 1936’, edited by Galaxia Gutenberg. The award is endowed with 12,000 euros (amount with which the Majadahonda City Council contributes as a patron to the Francisco Umbral Foundation), and a sculpture designed by Alberto Corazón.
The jury has decided to award this work for “the academic rigor and the wealth of documentation that underlies a fluid and engaging prose. This essay illuminates a decisive chapter in the history of Spain that does not ignore the human scale of the events that occurred in the spring of 1936.
Fernando del Rey and Manuel Álvarez Tardío feel “very comforted” after being awarded the award. «It caught us by surprise. The fact of receiving an award under the name of the great writer who was Francisco Umbral fills us with complete satisfaction,” they declared in a statement.
The ruling took place at the Foundation’s headquarters, in the Francisco Umbral municipal library, in Majadahonda. The jury was made up of Juan Cruz, journalist and writer; Carlos Aganzo, poet, director of Institutional Relations of El Norte de Castilla and deputy director of the Vocento Foundation; Cesar Antonio Molinawriter and former Minister of Culture; Fernando R. Lafuente, trustee of the José Ortega y Gasset-Gregorio Marañón Foundation; Fanny Rubio, writer and professor of Literature at the UCM; Santos Sanz Villanueva, critic and professor of Literature at the UCM; “El País” journalist Andrea Aguilar; Luis Alemany, editor of “El Mundo”, and Manuel Llorente, patron of the Foundation and president of the jury.
The mayor of Majadahonda, Lola Moreno, highlights the city’s commitment to culture: “we are a living city, with an important neighborhood demand for cultural activities and from the City Council we support awards like this one that represent clear recognition of our creators in this scope”.
Previous winners have been: ‘The Four Corners’, by Manuel Longares (2011); ‘The head on fire’, by Luis Mateo Díez (2012); ‘On the shore’, by Rafael Chirbes (2013); ‘Havana Requiem for Fidel’, by JJ Armas Marcelo (2014); ‘Unlearning’, by José Manuel Caballero Bonald (2015); ‘Homeland’, by Fernando Aramburu (2016); ‘Transition’, by Santos Juliá (2017); ‘Sur’, by Antonio Soler (2018); ‘Tiempos recios’, by Mario Vargas Llosa (2019), ‘The wonders’, by Elena Medel (2020), ‘Bite the tongue’, by Darío Villanueva (2021), ‘Of beasts and birds’, by Pilar Adón (2022 ) and ‘Santander, 1936’, by Álvaro Pombo (2023).
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