The million

The endowment of a new literary prize in the Spanish state has caused some controversy. In theory, according to the rules, the books that can be awarded one million euros by Aena have been published the previous year in one of the official languages of the State, although, now that we know who the five finalists were (all will receive 30,000 euros, except the winner, Samanta Schweblin, who will take the million) they are in Spanish. Catalan authors could opt for it, provided that the work has a Spanish translation, since it seems that juries do not necessarily have to know how to read in Catalan, Basque or Galician. I don't know what happens with works written in other official languages that are published in Spanish but not in the same year as their original publication: we can assume that they are no longer eligible for prizes. This enormously hinders any author in Catalan, for example, from ever being able to aspire to this award, even being a finalist is already a pipe dream. In this first call, which could be programmatic, all the books have been in Spanish. When an author wins the Planeta prize, now endowed with a million, they don't really win any prize: they receive an advance on sales, so that if the book sold more than a million copies, money would still have to be added (which I don't think has ever happened…). The Planeta is for an unpublished work, for a typescript that authors submit to the award; but not this new Aena prize, which recognizes a work that is already published, and which, as we can see, has a more literary profile, or more of a personal and 'risky' literature, beyond formulaic novels or more or less successful successful strategies that sell well and tend to feed the publishing business. But the endowment of this prize –so large– is raising a certain controversy, for its nouveau riche character, for the brutal ostentation of power (the company Aena is half public) and for the imbalance, I would like to add, with the finalists, or with what has been done –ignoring them– with other books published in also official languages. It is very likely that none of the current finalists will ever sniff such a sum of money again (not even by winning the Nobel, as Vila-Matas, another finalist, is said to be able to do). Such an award can put an end to a writer's literary career, needless to say: it can professionalize them, if that is what they desire, but it will also draw a spotlight on their work that can be counterproductive, or even unnecessary. Because one thing is to make a living selling books to readers who appreciate you, and another is to be able to retire because an institution – an airport one – has chosen you more for the benefit of its cultural prestige than for yours. And all in a week in which we have learned that a lot of Catalan publishing houses see their survival in danger because it turns out they don't have I don't know what seal that certifies the environmentalism of the paper they print with… And when newspapers publish less serious literary criticism than ever in their history, criticism that should arbitrate taste much better and much sooner than the juries of writers who judge other writers (who will judge them in the future).