All prizes Spain
Spain · Since 1945 · For books in Spanish
Awarded each 6 January in Barcelona by Ediciones Destino to an unpublished novel in Spanish, which Destino then publishes. Until 2009 the jury also named a finalist, the runner-up.
Ignacio Agustí proposed the prize in 1944, together with Josep Vergés and Joan Teixidor of Ediciones Destino. It is named after Eugenio Nadal, an editor at Destino who died that year aged 27. The first award, on 6 January 1945 at the Café Suizo in Barcelona, went to Carmen Laforet's Nada, chosen from 26 entries. Since 1958 the evening has been held at the Hotel Ritz, now the Hotel Palace, where the Josep Pla Prize for prose in Catalan is announced too. Entries are unpublished manuscripts. A jury of five picks a few finalists shortly before the ceremony (five in 2025) and the winner on the night. The prize is worth 30,000 euros; 1,207 manuscripts competed in 2026. Early winners include Miguel Delibes, Carmen Martín Gaite and Ana María Matute. In 1994 the finalist, José Ángel Mañas's Historias del Kronen, sold more copies than the winner, Rosa Regàs's Azul.
Nadal 2026 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The City of Dead Lights”
David Uclés · 36 when first published
Novel · Speculative, Historical
AI-generated summary:In Barcelona after the Civil War, a young woman's accident puts out every light, sun included, for a day, and all of the city's past and future versions crowd into the same space.
Nadal 2025 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Marcial's Secret”
Jorge Fernández Díaz · 65 when first published
Novel · 252 pages · Family, Migration, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Long after his father's death, a writer from the Spanish community of Buenos Aires tries to understand Marcial, an Asturian immigrant who answered his son's wish to write with silence and contempt.
Nadal 2024 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Under Dry Earth”
César Pérez Gellida · 50 when first published
Novel · 501 pages · Crime, Historical · Tierra quemada, book 1
AI-generated summary:In Extremadura in the early 1900s, a fire ruins the estate of the landowner everyone calls the Widow, who then vanishes; a lieutenant and a sergeant are sent to find out what happened.
Nadal 2023 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Us”
Manuel Vilas · 61 when first published
Novel · 365 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Irene is sure that she and her late husband Marcelo had a flawless love, one that shut everyone else out. Left alone, she discovers a strange way to keep him at her side.
Nadal 2022 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Ways of Loving”
Inés Martín Rodrigo · 39 when first published
Novel · 403 pages · Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:When the grandparents who raised her die suddenly, Noray withdraws to their house in the village of her childhood and finally begins writing the novel about her family she has long avoided.
Nadal 2021 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“On Monday They'll Love Us”
Najat El Hachmi · 42 when first published
Novel · 299 pages · Coming of age, Migration
AI-generated summary:At seventeen, a girl raised in a strict, closed community dreams of choosing her own life, and finds a model in a new friend whose family has left those rules behind.
Nadal 2020 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Map of Affections”
Ana Merino · 49 when first published
Novel · 219 pages · Love, Family
AI-generated summary:In a small country town, a young teacher secretly loves a man thirty years older, a wife disappears while her husband is overseas, and a womaniser's visits to a brothel are about to be exposed.
Nadal 2019 · Winner
Los crímenes de Alicia
Guillermo Martínez · 57 when first published
Novel · 333 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Oxford, 1994: a young scholar working on Lewis Carroll's diaries uncovers a clue to a page someone tore from them, but before she can share it, a series of crimes begins.
Nadal 2018 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“A Love”
Alejandro Palomas · 51 when first published
Novel · 462 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:On the eve of Emma's wedding, which falls on her scatterbrained, albino mother Amalia's birthday, a phone call brings bad news that the family decides to keep from Amalia.
Nadal 2017 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Half a Life”
Care Santos · 47 when first published
Novel · 413 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:One summer night in 1950, five girls at a convent boarding school share a final round of truth or dare that changes one life for good; in 1981, now grown women, they come together again.
Nadal 2016 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Eve of Almost Everything”
Víctor del Árbol · 48 when first published
Novel · 411 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Inspector Germinal Ibarra, who took refuge in A Coruña after solving a child's murder made him famous, is summoned at night to the bedside of a woman who has been savagely beaten.
Nadal 2015 · Winner
José C. Vales · 50 when first published
Novel · 448 pages · Crime, Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1940 a hack writer of popular fiction is sent to Biarritz to research a proper novel about a scandal from the summer of 1925, when a local girl was found dead on the quay after a storm.
Nadal 2014 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“That Was Life”
Carmen Amoraga · 45 when first published
Novel · 319 pages · Family, Love
AI-generated summary:Giuliana's husband William dies without warning, and she is left on her own with their two little girls, swinging between disbelief, rage and a rosy memory of their life together.
Nadal 2013 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“It Was in the Air”
Sergio Vila-Sanjuán · 56 when first published
Novel · 235 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Barcelona, 1960: a wealthy, beautiful and miserable woman, an adman whose radio show traces lost relatives, an industrialist close to power and a northern youth seeking his family meet as Spain changes.
Nadal 2012 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Hero's Tremor”
Álvaro Pombo · 73 when first published
Novel · 222 pages
AI-generated summary:A retired professor who misses the days of inspiring his students welcomes a young reporter, Héctor, into his life, without guessing how far the newcomer's troubled past will entangle him.
Nadal 2011 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Where No One Can Find You”
Alicia Giménez Bartlett · 60 when first published
Novel · 509 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:In 1956 a French expert on the criminal mind arrives in Barcelona hoping to meet La Pastora, a guerrilla fighter blamed for many killings and still hunted by the Guardia Civil, and enlists a local reporter.
Nadal 2010 · Winner
Lo que esconde tu nombre
Clara Sánchez · 55 when first published
Novel · 313 pages · Crime, Historical
AI-generated summary:Unemployed, pregnant and unsure what comes next, Sandra hides away on the Mediterranean coast and befriends a kind old Norwegian couple, until a Mauthausen survivor warns her about who they really are.
Nadal 2009 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Wait for Me in Heaven”
Maruja Torres · 66 when first published
Novel · 192 pages
AI-generated summary:Dead, the narrator joins her old friends, the writers Terenci Moix and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, in an afterlife where they can travel instantly through space and back into their own pasts.
Nadal 2009 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Book of Elusive Love”
Rubén Abella · 42 when first published
Novel · 252 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Heartbroken after Helena leaves him, Félix, who looks exactly like the pop idol Dónovan, spends his nights in Madrid pretending to be the singer, until he meets a woman named Luz.
Nadal 2008 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“What I Know About Vampires”
Francisco Casavella · 45 when first published
Novel · 564 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:A Galician noble's second son, training as a Jesuit when Spain expels the order in 1767, chooses to go with it into exile, the only decision in his life he makes freely.
Nadal 2008 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Memory Club”
Eva Díaz Pérez · 37 when first published
Novel · 301 pages · Historical, War
AI-generated summary:A film restorer comes across an old snapshot of young teachers and artists from the Republic's travelling cultural missions, dated Ávila 1932, and feels compelled to find out who they were.
Nadal 2007 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Market of Mirages”
Felipe Benítez Reyes · 47 when first published
Novel · 397 pages · Satire, Crime
AI-generated summary:Corina and Jacob, two elderly specialists in art heists, come out of retirement when an eccentric Mexican with mystical ideas asks them to steal the bones of the Magi from the cathedral in Cologne.
Nadal 2007 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Something So Like Love”
Carmen Amoraga · 38 when first published
Novel · 269 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Following three friends and the people around them, the novel asks which kind of love makes us happy, the faithful wife's, the jilted lover's, the unfaithful wife's or a partner's, and whether we notice when we have it.
Nadal 2006 · Winner
Llámame Brooklyn
Eduardo Lago · 52 when first published
Novel · 364 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:When his friend Gal Ackerman dies, a New York journalist feels bound to piece together the novel Gal never finished, left behind in a pile of notebooks in a Brooklyn motel room.
Nadal 2006 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Susanna and the Elders”
Marta Sanz · 39 when first published
Novel · 300 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Three generations of a family move through love, desire and resentment, as women who refuse to be what the men around them expect are pushed to defend themselves fiercely.
Nadal 2005 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“A Difficult Assignment”
Pedro Zarraluki · 51 when first published
Novel · 253 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1940 the widow of a Republican official executed after the Civil War is exiled with her daughter to the tiny island of Cabrera, while on Mallorca a man is handed a dirty job that could clear his name.
Nadal 2005 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Light Hunters”
Nicolás Casariego · 35 when first published
Novel · 315 pages · Speculative, Satire
AI-generated summary:In a near future, Mallick, a cynical salesman who will sell anything, himself included, falls for a woman who seems beyond his reach just as his employer demands something that could cost him his life.
Nadal 2004 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Englishmen's Road”
Antonio Soler · 48 when first published
Novel · 349 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Between school and grown-up life, a gang of young friends by the sea spends a summer of girlfriends, desire, fights and grand plans, sensing that the future will not be as they imagine it.
Nadal 2004 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Smile, Delgado”
Javier Puebla · 46 when first published
Novel · 220 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:In Beirut, a man with a shady history meets a Spanish diplomat dying in the street, and agrees to take over his identity if he will kill a woman in Barcelona for him.
Nadal 2003 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Friends of the Perfect Crime”
Andrés Trapiello · 50 when first published
Novel · 333 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Paco Cortés, author of pulp novels, and his friends have spent years inventing the flawless murder, each under a famous detective's name; then a real death in their circle seems to fit the bill.
Nadal 2003 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Great Silence”
David Torres · 37 when first published
Novel · 269 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:A boxer who was once the best middleweight in Europe now does strong-arm work for money, alone except for a silent barman and a fish in a bowl, until a search pulls him out of Madrid.
Nadal 2002 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“States of Deficiency”
Ángela Vallvey · 38 when first published
Novel · 365 pages · Satire, Family
AI-generated summary:Abandoned by Penélope, a designer, Ulises raises their son Telémaco alone, while his father-in-law Vili sets up a school to show the miserable how a good life brings contentment, in a comedy whose names echo the Odyssey.
Nadal 2002 · Finalist
Novel · 307 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:In 1920s Mallorca, a captain who lived through Spain's rout at Annual joins Kaleidoscopio, an anarchist group plotting to set off bombs in Palma, and is told to steal the dynamite.
Nadal 2001 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Colonels' Boy”
Fernando Marías · 43 when first published
Novel · 527 pages · Politics, War
AI-generated summary:Luis Ferrer is commissioned to interview an indigenous rebel on Leonito, a Caribbean island under military rule, and stumbles into a string of mysteries linked to a dead man's malevolent last will.
Nadal 2001 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“The Moon in Jorge”
Lola Beccaria · 38 when first published
Novel · 420 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Jorge, Sofía and Ramón lead unremarkable lives until each senses a hidden, singular self pushing to come out, and they set out, through love, sex and betrayal, to chase dreams they had shelved.
Nadal 2000 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Impatient Alchemist”
Lorenzo Silva · 34 when first published
Novel · 281 pages · Crime · Bevilacqua y Chamorro, book 2
AI-generated summary:A dead man lies naked and bound on a motel bed off the highway, unmarked by any blow. Guardia Civil sergeant Bevilacqua and his partner Chamorro are sent to find out whether anyone killed him.
Nadal 2000 · Finalist
Title translated by AI:“Daphne Vanished”
José Carlos Somoza · 41 when first published
Novel · 237 pages
AI-generated summary:A bestselling novelist wakes from a car crash with no memory, and a note he wrote just before it saying he loves a woman he doesn't know. He sets out to discover whether she is real.