Planeta 2021 Award: Jorge Días, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero are the winners of the 70th edition

The writers Jorge Días, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero are the winners of the 70th edition of the Premio Planeta for their book “La bestia”, overcoming a contest in which 654 novels were presented.

The award also revealed the identity of one of the biggest secrets in Spanish literature: the identity of Carmen Mola, who was revealed as a pseudonym under which the trio of writers worked. Previously ‘Mola’ had published the novels of the saga “The gypsy bride”.

The decision was determined by a prestigious jury in which writers and scholars such as José Manuel Blecua, Fernando Delgado, Juan Eslava Galán, Pere Gimferrer, Carmen Posadas, Rosa Regàs and Belén López stood out.

For its part, the novel “Last Days in Berlin” by Paloma Sánchez-Garnica, Madrid-based author of historical novels such as “Sofia’s Suspicion”, “The Soul of the Stones” and more, was a finalist. “Last Days in Berlin” is his eighth novel.

This edition of the Planeta Prize was particularly fruitful for its winner, since this year the monetary prize was raised from 601 thousand euros to one million euros (approximately 4 million 564 thousand soles), which even made it an economically more profitable prize than the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature (990 thousand euros).