The decision was announced this Thursday in Barcelona and comes after an especially competitive edition, with 1,248 manuscripts submitted. The prize, worth 18,000 euros and including a statuette designed by Joaquín Camps, was awarded by a majority decision of a jury chaired by Antonio Orejudo and also comprising Eva Cosculluela, Andrea Gumes, Francisco Serrano and Juan Cerezo, representing the publishing house.
The jury praised The Leopards for its “extraordinary emotional intensity,” as well as the authenticity of its voices and Borraz’s ability to intertwine memory, desire, friendship and loss without becoming sentimental. It also highlighted the group of female characters at the heart of a story shaped by the profound social changes Spain experienced in the final decades of the 20th century.
A STORY THAT RETURNS TO ZARAGOZA AND THE PYRENEES
The protagonist, Clara, lives in Zaragoza during the school year and spends the summers with her family in the Pyrenees. From the late 1970s onward, the novel traces the awakening of a generation of women who begin to break with conventions, while friendship, music, cinema and the discovery of new freedoms accompany their early adult years. An illness will ultimately shape the lives of some of them.
Behind the fiction lies a deeply personal story as well. Borraz has explained that the protagonist was inspired by her aunt Paloma, who died when the author was 15. The writer took around three decades to find a way to tell that experience and, to reconstruct the period, spoke with relatives, friends and people connected to Zaragoza at the time, including a doctor who treated sick women at Miguel Servet Hospital.
“We are all leopards,” Borraz explains when discussing the novel’s origins. The author says she was inspired by the women who cared for and protected one another, and acknowledges that writing the book also allowed her to return to the Zaragoza of her adolescence, the Monegros and the rivers and mountains of the Aragonese Pyrenees. She describes the award as “immense joy” and as recognition that reinforces her path as a fiction writer.
FROM "YEARS OF LIFE" TO THE TUSQUETS PRIZE
The Leopards will be Marta Borraz’s second novel after "Years of Life," published by Xordica in 2024 and becoming one of the recent phenomena in Aragonese literature. The work, a family story linked to the Spanish Civil War and rural Aragón, reached nine editions and became the best-selling book in Aragón in 2024.
