Carmen V. Valiña wins the 19th Repsol Short Story Award

The work titled A isla que supuraba sangre (The island that bleeds blood) by Carmen V. Valiña is the winner of the 19th edition of the Repsol Short Story Award in Galician. She wins 12,000 euros and has her work published by Editorial Galaxia. This was announced this morning by the spokesperson for the Jury, Fran Fernández Davila. 

This year’s event "travelled" to the city of Vigo for the 75th Anniversary of the Editorial Galaxia that publishes the winning work every year. It was attended by the representatives of the entities promoting the award: the Secretary-General of Language Policy, Valentín García, the manager of Institutional Relations of the Repsol Foundation, Mercedes Gómez Badiola, and the executive managing director of Editorial Galaxia, Xosé Manuel Soutullo. 

The Jury of the 19th edition of the Repsol Short Story Award was made up this year by five prestigious personalities from the Galician literary world: the director of Ediciones de la Galaxia, Marcos Calveiro; the writer and winner of the 17th edition of the Repsol Short Story Award, Fran Fernández Davila; the archivist and member of the Executive Committee of the Royal Galician Academy, Dolores Sánchez Palomino; the literary critic, Armando Requesón Cuba, and the writer and teacher nominated by the Galician Language Writers Association (AELG), María Álvarez Landesa. 

A illa que supuraba sangue

In its 19th edition, the Repsol Short Story Prize had a participation of 43 original and unpublished works with a minimum length of 50 pages and a maximum of 120.

Fran Fernández Davila, spokesperson for the Jury, highlighted the novel by Carmen V. Valiña for "her ability to immerse us in a game of temporary mirrors that on the one hand takes us to the difficult time in the immediate post-war period and to the world of the oppressed, and on the other, places them in a tumultuous present with the symbolic island of San Simón as the setting.” 

According to the members of the Jury, the work "is written with finely crafted prose and brushes of lyricism, this narration also opens up intrigue with the desperation of one of the main characters, a mystery that will take us to an ending that is sure to be as surprising as it is disturbing.” 

The winner

Carmen V. Valiña (Baio, A Coruña, 1985) is a doctor in Contemporary History, professor at the Universidad Europea Miguel de Cervantes (UEMC), and creator and director of PeriFéricas, Alternative Feminism School.  

She combines research on the memory of anonymous women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with her talent as a writer of fiction where memories, the rural world, and autobiography hold a remarkable weight. She wrote and published about Spanish journalists in the Middle East and about emigrants from the Tierra de Soneira in Switzerland, but since 2021, she has specialized in the stories of female inmates at Conxo. The result of this work is her essay As tolas que non o era (The fools who weren’t) (2025, Galaxy). 

In 2024, she took part in the Mariñán Residence for Literature and Thought and in the Literary Residence of the Island of San Simón, and this year she has been one of the authors selected for the 5th Literary Residence of the Cidade da Cultura, REGA 2025. 

The Repsol Short Story Award: nearly twenty years creating Galician literature

The Short Story Award was created in 2006 by the Repsol Industrial Complex in A Coruña and organized jointly with the General Secretariat of Language of the Xunta de Galicia, with the aim of promoting Galician culture and language. In 2010, the Repsol Foundation took over the promotion of the contest, which, since its inception, has had the support of the Royal Galician Academy and the Galician Language Writers Association (AELG), as well as the close collaboration with Editorial Galaxia, which published the previous winning works. 

In the first edition, in 2006, the journalist, Miguel Sande, won this award for his work Si algún día esta mujer muerta and Xavier Lama, a USC professor and journalist, won an award for El insomnio de los centauros.  

The winner of the second edition was the work Así nacen las ballenas by the writer, Ánxeles Sumai, and in the third the narrator, playwright, and cartoonist, Xosé Luís Martínez Pereiro, won the award for La verdad como mal menor.  

In the 2010 edition, the award went to the writer, Xurxo Sierra, for his work Los Fios. Microbios y otros pachidermos by Fernando Díaz-Castroverde won the 2011 edition.  

In 2012, the award went to La forma de las nubes, by María López Sande; while in 2013 the winning short story was El último libro de Emma Olsen, by Berta Dávila.  

In 2014, Santiago Lopo won the award thanks to his work La diagonal de los Locos and in 2015 the winning short story was Fontán del vigués by Marcos Calveiro. Daniel Asorey was the winner of the 2016 edition with his novel Nordeste.  

The journalist, writer, and professor, Xosé A. Neira Cruz, won the award for El sonido de las sirenas in 2017, and Antón Lopo won in 2018 for his work Extraordinario. 

In the 2019 and 2020 editions, two new Galician writers were awarded: Gonzalo Hermo for his work Diario de un entierro and Berta Dávila became the winner of this award for the second time with her short story, Isla Decepción. 

In 2021, the novel Eternity by writer Xosé Monteagudo won him the prize, and in 2022, Alberto Ramos won for his novel Los cuerpos dos Romanov. In 2023, the winner of the award was Fran Fernández Davila for his work Groenlandia and in the last edition, Ramos became the winner for the second time with his novel Pirotecnia.  

Since its inception in 2006, the contest has had the participation of almost 600 original works by Galician writers. 

More information: acoruna.repsol.es/gl and www.fundacionrepsol.com