Cristina Fernández Cubas has won the 2026 Cervantes Prize, Spain’s leading award for literature in Spanish. Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun announced the decision on Monday at the institution’s headquarters. The prize is worth €125,000, and Fernández Cubas succeeds Mexican writer Gonzalo Celorio, who received it last year.
The jury cited the “originality, excellence and coherence” of Fernández Cubas’s work, saying she had renewed the contemporary short story and transformed fantastic literature in Spanish. It also praised her precise narrative style, command of perspective and use of silence.
According to the jury, her stories unsettle readers’ assumptions by finding the disturbing in everyday life and questioning the boundaries of reality, identity and knowledge. Rather than offering reassuring explanations, they preserve ambiguity and use imagination to explore human experience.
Fernández Cubas, born in Arenys de Mar, Barcelona, in 1945, is particularly known for her short stories. Her books include Mi hermana Elba (1980), Los altillos de Brumal (1983), El ángulo del horror (1990) and Parientes pobres del diablo (2006). La habitación de Nona (2015) received Spain’s National Narrative Prize and the Critics’ Prize, among other honors.
She becomes the seventh woman to receive the Cervantes Prize since it was established in 1976. Previous women laureates named in the announcement include María Zambrano, Dulce María Loynaz, Ana María Matute, Elena Poniatowska, Ida Vitale and Cristina Peri Rossi.
Sources: elDiario.es.