Paco Cerdà, National Narrative Award 2025 | Culture | EUROtoday

Francisco Cerdà Arroyo (Paco Cerdá) has been awarded the 2025 National Narrative Prize, for his work Gifts (Alfaguara), on the proposal of the jury assembly at present, Friday. The prize, awarded by the Ministry of Culture, is price 30,000 euros.

The jury has chosen the work for “the stylistic mastery with which the author, with a lyricism as natural as it is impressive, describes the construction of a myth, through the narration of the transfer of the remains of José Antonio Primo de Rivera from Alicante to El Escorial.” Furthermore, the jury has indicated that Gifts It is “a particular choral chronicle that allows us to intertwine, thanks to its structural findings, the different voices without losing pace to address an episode in our history that is both solemn and grotesque.”

The jury has additionally highlighted that Cerdà “combines journalistic investigation with a clean and honest narrative style. His gaze is directed at the invisible in history—those who never had a voice—and turns them into protagonists of a human and profound reflection on the past, with which he demonstrates that literature can be an act of truth and reparation without giving up beauty. Gifts proposes a story as terrifying as it is exciting in which the reader is immersed in a pilgrimage full of details.”

Cerdà (Genovés, Valencia, 40 years old) is a journalist and writer. He is a collaborator of EL PAÍS, Cadena Ser and the magazine Hispanic American Notebooks. Cerdà founded and directed the publishing house La Caja Books. In addition, he teaches Non-Fiction classes at the University of Valencia. Among his works are April 14, Asteroid Books Non-Fiction Award 2022, Valencian Critics Award and Navarra Bookstores Award; The pawn, Cálamo Award for Book of the Year 2020 and finalist for the Best Foreign Book Award in France, and The last ones (2017).

In its last edition, the award recognized Raúl Quinto, joining a long list of winners, among whom are Marilar Aleixandre, Xesús Fraga, Juan Bonilla, Pilar Adón, Cristina Morales, Almudena Grandes, Fernando Aramburu and Cristina Fernández Cubas, among others.

[Noticia en desarrollo. Habrá ampliación]