With a provision of US$175,000 and simultaneous publication in all Spanish-speaking countries, a jury of notables composed of Sergio Ramírez, Rosa Montero, Juan José Millás, Laura Restrepo, Manuel Rivas and Pilar Reyeseditorial director of Alfaguara (with voice but without vote) declared Sergio del Molino and his novel “Los Alemanes” the winner of the Alfaguara Prize.
The jury highlighted in its decision “his mastery to narrate an event very little known about Spanish history related to the mutations of Nazism and with profound consequences in today’s world. Dark family secrets contain a threatening past capable of destroying the present. Do children inherit the guilt of their parents? A fascinating novel that tests the conscience of the characters and shakes that of the reader.”
Were 800 manuscripts that were received to participate in the Award. Of them, 396 arrived from Spain, 104 from Argentina, 109 from Mexico, 93 from Colombia, 40 from the United States, 20 from Chile, 26 from Peru and 12 from Uruguay.
Who is the author
Little known in Argentina, Sergio del Molino He is a writer in whose work, social and political problems intersect with fiction. “Empty Spain” and “Against empty Spain” They were his most successful books and deal with a very hot topic in his country: rural depopulation. He is also the author of a dozen novels and essays: “The Violet Hour,” “Places Out of Place,” “What Nobody Cares About,” “The Look of the Fish,” “Calomarde,” “The Skin” and others. He is a columnist for the newspaper El País and works in radio.
“Germans”that will arrive in bookstores in April, arises from a real event: the arrival in Spain, in 1916, of 627 Germans. The First War has ended and Spain is a neutral country. These Germans will stay forever to live in the country. The story, in the novel, begins a century later, with the heirs of one of those men settled in Spain, and reveals a shameful and little-recognized episode in Spanish history: the circumstance that the country was safe haven for the Nazis.
As Del Molino declared when receiving the award: “the past is always lurking to punish us when we are careless.” That is the tragic spring of this fiction.
The beginning of the novel
“On May 2, 1916, the steamers Cataluña and Isla de Panay docked in the port of Cádiz. They transported 627 Germans from the colony of Cameroon, conquered by the Allies in February of that year in one of the least known and least talked about episodes of the Great War. Instead of surrendering to their enemies, the Germans surrendered to the Spanish authorities in Guinea. Spain, as a neutral power, welcomed them as internees. They no longer left the country and settled, above all and among other cities, in Alcalá de Henares, Pamplona and Zaragoza. They would soon become famous and would be known as the Germans of Cameroon.
So far, the story as it appears in the records. From here on, the legend.
1. Faith
I’ll go see dad, I told him. Of course I’ll go. I had already decided to go before he glared at my elbow, and long before he clicked his tongue and sighed. She looks like a teenager when she gets angry, I thought, but maybe only I see it. They will be brother things.
When I got out of the taxi and walked to the gate, Eva saw me coming and crossed her arms. She stiffened, she did not put forward a leg to meet me. She waited for me to arrive and she didn’t even respond to my hug. I gave her a kiss on the cheek, a real kiss, the kind that stains, and she didn’t move or greet me. Are you coming straight, without stopping by dad’s house? She, she told me, as if I were to blame for Iberia’s schedules, as if I had concocted a plot of delayed trains and canceled flights.
—You haven’t brought a suitcase? I thought you were staying for a few days, until goodbye, at least,” she said, looking at the backpack she was carrying on her back, a small backpack that only held two shirts and a change of clothes.
—I didn’t want to bill, I’ll figure it out. Yes, damn it, I’ll stay a few days, of course I’ll stay a few days.
—Good, because we will have to decide what we do with Gabi’s papers and we have to sign a lot of things.
That, let’s decide now. Let’s settle everything at the cemetery gate, before I run away again and don’t respond to emails and pretend that my life has nothing to do with yours.”
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