2023-10-14 07:31:13
Determined to spur the sleepy literary Spain of the 1950s, the editor José Manuel Lara Hernández (1914-2003), a spirited Sevillian from El Pedroso installed after the civil war in Barcelona, which he entered with the victorious troops, took himself out of his tirelessly magín the Planeta novel prize in 1952. Today it continues to be one of the milestones of the literary calendar and the lung of a vast publishing emporium glimpsed in times of hardship. His purse has gone from an initial 40,000 pesetas to one million euros.
It is also, for good and bad, a thermometer and mirror of what literary creation and Spanish publishing have given of themselves in almost three quarters of a century. This Sunday he turns 72 years old and the veteran award winner is in perfect health. He is the most desired and the best gifted on the Hispanic literary scene. His endowment exceeds that of the Nobel Prize in Literature. It is the award that all authors in the Spanish language dream of, to whom it grants stratospheric levels of dissemination and popularity.
Its endowment has gone from 40,000 pesetas in 1952 to one million euros, above the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The list of winners and finalists of the Planet is, with its lights and shadows, the thermometer and the history of the latest Hispanic narrative. Outstanding Spanish and Latin American writers appear on the ‘roll of honour’ of this award on which José Manuel Lara Hernández built an entire publishing empire.
Lara, an enterprising character and clever businessman, faced with his Planeta the literary award that then set the standard, the Nadal de Destino (both today in Planeta’s orbit). In just three editions it went head to head with its competitor, who had launched authors like Carmen Laforet or Miguel Delibes, and marked a new editorial style, no stranger to controversy and very attentive to an untapped commercial vein in the squalid publishing world of the time.
Lara set out to demonstrate that selling books is a business, that writing was no longer crying, and that the author should be a participant in the success through dissemination and popularity. He knew the need and amplifying effect of a well-paid prize that would encourage the still exhausted Spanish writers to make themselves known in a market dominated by translations of Saxon novels and without commercial strategies. The star authors then were Somerset Maugham, Vicky Baum and Pearl S. Buck.
Time proved him right, they have sold 45 million copies of the award-winning set of novels. A figure that averages around 600,000 copies of each winner and places almost 2.3 ‘planets’ in each Spanish home. In its history, the Planet has received more than 27,000 manuscripts. The 2023 edition once again sets a new record for works submitted, 1,129 novels, 461 more than the previous year – there were 846 in 2022 and 654 in 2021 -, a record that confirms the strength of the award and the interest that Spain and America arouse .
Dawn in Lhardy
The first Planeta went to ‘In the night there are no roads’, by Juan José Mira, pseudonym of the disaffected to the regime and clandestine author Juan José Moreno. He took a bag of 40,000 pesetas that 72 years later multiplied by just over four thousand to reach today’s million euros, 166 million of the extinct pesetas. The finalist that year was Severino Fernández for ‘Land of Promise’ and there was no ‘money’ for him.
The impact of that first call in the media was “nil” according to Lara. But the clever editor would remedy the deficiency. He raised the stock market to 100,000 pesetas. The popularity of the award and its winners grew like wildfire, especially since Lara, very aware of the power of the media and with a great sense of spectacle, decided to hand the check to the winner in the studios of a fledgling television station.
October 15th
The festival of Saint Teresa, the name day of the wife of the founder of the award, is celebrated.
In its inaugural year, the ruling was announced at the Lhardy restaurant in Madrid, steeped in literary history and tradition. The following year he moved to the Círculo de Bellas Artes, but already in 1955 he was looking for the ‘glamour’ and the capacity of the rooms of the Palace Hotel. Since that fourth edition, the date of October 15, the feast of Saint Teresa, was imposed for the ruling, in homage to María Teresa Bosch, wife of the founder of the award.
After seven years of consolidation in Madrid, the ruling and its increasingly spectacular evening moved to Barcelona, the Spanish publishing capital. By then, Ana María Matute, Emilio Romero, Carmen Kurtz and Antonio Prieto had already won prizes and the purse had grown to 200,000 pesetas.
Ten years after its creation, it already exceeded, with 1.1 million pesetas – Angel María de Lera took them – Nadal’s endowment, which had risen to one million for its 25th anniversary. In ’73, there were two million and in ’74, half a million was given to the finalist for the first time. Four in 77. Twenty in 88. Without ever fainting in a meteoric rise -50 million in 92 that went to Fernando Sánchez Dragó, and already 12 for the finalist- remaining as the best gifted on the publishing scene, until reaching the one hundred million pesetas for the winner with whom he entered the 21st century on the 50th anniversary of the Prize – Rosa Regàs won them in 2001 – and 25 for the finalist.
With the euro, the amount increased to 601,000 euros for the winning work and 150,250 for the finalist. In 2021, its amount increased by one million euros, for the winner, to whom the three authors using the pseudonym Carmen Mola – Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero – were distributed, and 200,000 euros for the finalist.
Honors
His record is, for good and bad, a thermometer of Spanish literature in which there are several Cervantes and Nobel Prize winners, such as Camilo José Cela, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ana María Matute, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, or Eduardo Mendoza.
On the other hand, there is no shortage of names now included in literature manuals, but there are many narrators who received the award as a confirmation or springboard for a career that was later consolidated. Among them Ramón J. Sender, José María Gironella -winner in ’71 who set sales records-, Mercedes Salisachs, Jorge Semprún, Juan Marsé, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Terenci Moix, -the great bestseller on the ‘Planeta’ list with 1 .5 million books sold- Soledad Puértolas, Antonio Muñoz or Juan Manuel de Prada.
The Jury currently includes José Manuel Blecua, Fernando Delgado, Juan Eslava Galán, Pere Gimferrer, Carmen Posadas, Rosa Regàs and Belén López, as voting secretary.
Footnote
All data has been collected from the Planeta and Planeta de Libros Awards website. To the list of winning titles and their authors have been added, based on the same sources, the values referring to the genre of the novel, the number and sex of the members of the jury or the amount of the prize. In the case of the amount delivered, the cost of publishing the copies is not taken into account. Sara I. Belled and Leticia Aróstegui have collaborated on this article.
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