The Chilean writer Isabel Allende won the 75th edition of the Premio Planeta on October 15, 2026, an award worth one million euros, for her novel "La hora antes del alba," which returns to the universe of "La casa de los espíritus."
The verdict was announced at a gala in Barcelona presided over by the King and Queen of Spain, according to El Universal's account. According to Infobae's coverage, this edition received 1,424 entries, a record figure, and the jury chose the winning title from among nine finalists. The recognition once again puts at the center of publishers' new-release tables a work that engages with Latin American political memory, a subject with loyal readers in Mexico, the United States and Canada, where the author has a well-established readership.
Allende, 84, competed under the pseudonym Luz Ventura and with the working title "Los que faltan." The work follows Alba, Clara's granddaughter, after her time in prison under the dictatorship, and the author describes it as the closing of the universe she opened in 1982. She said readers had been asking her for decades what happened after the ending and that she now felt the time had come.
The roster of winners for this edition is as follows: - Winner: Isabel Allende, with "La hora antes del alba" and one million euros. - Finalist: Sergio Hernández, with "La añoranza" and 200,000 euros. - Earlier books in the same universe: "Hija de la fortuna," "Retrato en sepia" and "Mi nombre es Emilia del Valle."
The jury was made up of Paloma Sánchez Garnica, Javier Sierra, Carmen Posadas, Luz Gabás, Pere Gimferrer, Eva Giner and Belén López. The novel's editorial presentation is scheduled for November and the first print run is around 210,000 copies, a figure that anticipates the literary conversation of the coming months in Spanish-language bookstores.
This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence based on verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.
