Leonardo Padura, Liber Prize 2026 for the most outstanding Spanish-American author

The Federation of Editors’ Guilds of Spain has granted the Liber Prize 2026 to the most prominent Hispanic American author to the Cuban writer Leonardo Paduraone of the great voices of contemporary literature in Spanish.

Thus, the jury highlighted his “ability to tell stories that, based on research, investigate truth, guilt, friendship and the weight of history on the individual lives“.

Likewise, he has valued a career of “great international projection”as well as “the richness of registers and genres that characterizes his work.”

After learning about the award of the Liber 2026 Prize, the writer has expressed his gratitude and has assured that he has received the news “with enormous satisfaction and also with pride,” as he explained in a statement.

“I doubly thank the Federation of Editors’ Guilds of Spain for choosing my work for the this year’s distinctionand I express my gratitude as an author and as a Cuban writer who lives and writes in Cuba“, he added.

Padura has stressed the importance of the award and the entity that grants it because it is “one that plays the essential task of giving visibility“to the work of writers.

“It is a reason for double satisfaction, because it represents recognition not only of me, but also of the culture to which I belong and in which I remain”, he has settled.

Born in Havana in 1955, Padura is a key figure in current Hispanic literature. He was recognized with the Princess of Asturias Award of the Letters in 2015 and his name is especially linked to the series of detective novels starring Mario Conde, a melancholic and lucid detective through which the novelist portrays daily life, the contradictions and the transformations of Cuban society.

The delivery of the Liber 2026 Prize to Padura will take place on September 30 at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC), within the framework of the International Book Fair, Liber 2026.