Josep R. Cerdà wins the first Àngel Guimerà prize with 'La segona línia'
The Mallorcan playwright is recognized at the Night of Catalan Letters with a work about guilt and the "losers" of the tourism model
PalmThe Mallorcan playwright and writer Josep R. Cerdà has won the first Àngel Guimerà prize for dramatic literature with his work The second lineThe award was presented during the Night of Catalan Letters, recently held in the Oval Room of the MNAC in Barcelona. Created this year and endowed with 15,000 euros, the prize has become the highest-paid dramatic award in Spain and aims to strengthen the presence of theater within the Catalan literary scene.
The second line It intensely explores human fragility through characters who inhabit the margins of the system. The jury highlighted the work's "structural coherence and mastery of theatrical language," as well as its ability to convey guilt and intimate pain on a stage charged with skepticism and desolation. The story places the protagonists in a caravan next to a ghostly hotel closed during the winter, a temporary refuge where they face the storms, both literally and symbolically. Several critics have interpreted these figures as the "losers of the tourism model," an incisive look at contemporary Mallorca and its social fractures.
Originally from Binissalem, Cerdà combines a literary career with theater and teaching, and his work has always been recognized for the strength of its characters and the ability to create dense dramatic worlds, where the everyday takes on an almost poetic quality. With this award, the author becomes the star of a gala that replaces the traditional Saint Lucy's Night and aims to become the major annual celebration of Catalan literature. The evening also recognized other prominent figures in Balearic literature, such as Carles Rebassa, winner of the Sant Jordi Novel Prize, confirming the current strength of literature from the archipelago within the Catalan context.