Romulo Gallegos Award

The Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize is an award created in honor of the Venezuelan novelist and politician of the same name on August 1, 1964 through a decree promulgated by the then President of Venezuela Raúl Leoni. Initially, its objective was to reward Latin American novels, but from the 1990s it expanded to the entire Spanish-speaking area. The first non-American author to receive the award was the Spaniard Javier Marías.

From the beginning it became one of the most important prizes in the field of narrative in Spanish, fully coinciding with the Latin American boom, to such an extent that the first three winners, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes were part of said movement.

Considered by many to be the most important literary prize in Latin America, it is awarded every two years by the Venezuelan government (the first five editions were every five years) through the "Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos Rómulo Gallegos" (CELARG).

On July 24, 2020, the organization, the composition of the jury and the new date of delivery of the award, were rescheduled due to the quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

History

Exhibition with the winning works of the Novela Rómulo Gallegos International Prize (1967-2015).

On August 1, 1964, Venezuelan President Raúl Leoni published his decree No. 83, which established the Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize with the purpose of “perpetuating and honoring the work of an eminent novelist and stimulate the creative activity of Spanish-speaking writers”. Three years later, in 1967, the first call was published. Seventeen novels submitted to thirteen critics from all over Latin America participated, who named the novel La casa verde by Mario Vargas Llosa as the winner. Originally the prize was awarded every five years.

From 1987 it was established that the award would be biennial, in accordance with decree No. 1271 (September 17, 1986) of President Jaime Lusinchi. In 1995 the award was extended to all Spanish-speaking countries and that same year the Spanish writer Javier Marías was awarded.

In recent years, the number of participating novels has been overwhelming (in 2003, 246 novels competed, in 2005, 208; in 2013, 200). In the early 2000s, an international controversy arose around the survival and objectives of the prize. In 2003 there were even rumors about his disappearance, which did not take place. In 2005, the critic and editor of the French house Gallimard, Gustavo Guerrero, denounced in the Spanish newspaper El País the election of a pro-Castro and pro-Chavista jury, which favored Isaac Rosa, a writer who supported the regime. Cuban. In any case, Guerrero admits that Rosa's novel, El vano ayer, seemed "brilliant".

Selection process

After forty years, the call, the participation of critics and the process of their selection by the Venezuelan government have changed on several occasions. If in the first edition the jury was made up of thirteen critics from thirteen different American countries, in 2007 it was made up of only five critics from four countries (Venezuela, Cuba, Chile and Ecuador) and in 2013 by three: two specialists in Hispanic literature — the Venezuelan Luis Duno-Gottberg and the Puerto Rican Juan R. Duchesne Winter—plus the previous laureate, the Argentine Ricardo Piglia. With rare exceptions, as in 2005, the writer of the last winning novel has been part of the jury.

Novels published in the two years prior to the appearance of the call, written in Spanish, by authors of any nationality, may participate. The winner is decided by a majority vote of the jury and the prize cannot be declared void. The award consists of a gold medal, a diploma and a cash prize of 80,000 euros. The award ceremony is always held on August 2, the day Rómulo Gallegos was born.

Award-winning works

Edition	Year	Title	Author	Country	Image
I	1967	The green house	Mario Vargas Llosa	Peru Peru
II	1972	Hundred years of solitude	Gabriel García Márquez	ColombiaColombia
III	1977	Terra Nostra	Carlos Fuentes	Mexico Mexico
IV	1982	Palinuro de México	Fernando del Paso	Mexico Mexico
V	1987	The dogs of paradise	Abel Posse	Argentina
VI	1989	The house of the two palms	Manuel Mejía Vallejo	ColombiaColombia
VII	1991	Visiting time	Arturo Uslar Pietri	Venezuela
VIII	1993	Holy Office of Memory	Mempo Giardinelli	Argentina
IX	1995	Tomorrow in the battle thinks of me	Javier Marías	SpainSpain
X	1997	Evil love	Angels Mastretta	Mexico Mexico
XI	1999	The wild detectives	Roberto Bolaño	ChileChile
XII	2001	The vertical journey	Enrique Vila-Matas	SpainSpain
XIII	2003	The wreck	Fernando Vallejo	ColombiaColombia
XIV	2005	The vain yesterday	Isaac Rosa	SpainSpain
XV	2007	The train passes first	Elena Poniatowska	Mexico Mexico
XVI	2009	The country of the cinnamon	William Ospina	ColombiaColombia
XVII	2011	Night white	Ricardo Piglia	Argentina
XVIII	2013	Simone	Eduardo Lalo	Puerto RicoPuerto Rico
XIX	2015	Triptych of infamy	Pablo Montoya	ColombiaColombia
-	2017	Suspended
XX.	2020	The country of the devil	Perla Suez	Argentina