The jury highlighted “his ability to tell stories” that “delve into truth, guilt, friendship, and the weight of history on individual lives”
14ymedio, Madrid,August 27, 2026 / Cuban writer Leonardo Padura has been awarded the 2026 Liber Prize, granted by the Federation of Publishers’ Guilds of Spain (FGEE) to the “most outstanding Spanish American author.” In a statement released this Thursday, the organization reports that the jury “highlighted his ability to tell stories that, starting from research, delve into truth, guilt, friendship, and the weight of history on individual lives.”
They also praised, the statement adds, “a career of great international reach and the richness of registers and genres that characterize his work.”
The statement also includes remarks from Padura upon learning of the award, in which he expresses his “gratitude as an author and as a Cuban writer who lives and writes in Cuba.”
“It is a source of double satisfaction, because it represents recognition not only of me personally, but also of the culture to which I belong and in which I remain”
Speaking from Spain, a country whose nationality he has held since 2011 and where he spends long periods of time, the writer noted that he is the first Cuban to receive this prize: “It is a source of double satisfaction, because it represents recognition not only of me personally, but also of the culture to which I belong and in which I remain.”
He likewise stated: “It is not just any prize, nor is it awarded by just any institution, but by one that carries out the essential work of giving visibility to our work as writers and of managing the means by which it can complete its life cycle – first by existing, and then by reaching the reader.”
For its part, the Prize organization noted that “through his writing, Leonardo Padura has turned Cuban reality into literary material of international reach.” His body of work, it continues, “marked by social criticism and a deep attention to Cuba’s recent history, offers a complex view of the memory, utopias, and disillusionments of several generations.”
Born in Havana in 1955 and winner of the 2015 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, the writer has received numerous honors, among them the Café Gijón, the Dashiell Hammett, the Islas 2000, the Brigada 21, the Barcino Historical Novel Prize, and the 2023 Pepe Carvalho Prize.
His career is especially notable for his series of detective novels featuring Inspector Mario Conde – whose most recent installment was Personas decentes (2022), set during the 2016 thaw in relations between the US and Cuba – and El hombre que amaba los perros (2009), about Trotsky and his assassin, Ramón Mercader.
His most recent work is Morir en la arena, featuring Rodolfo, a recently retired man in Havana whose life is marked by the war in Angola and by his father’s murder at the hands of his own brother. Before that, he published Como polvo en el viento (2020), centered on the drama of exile through several characters.
The award ceremony will take place on September 30 at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC), during the Liber International Book Fair, an event aimed at industry professionals, which in 2026 will be held in Barcelona from September 29 to October 1.
Translated by GH
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