Sergio del Molino, 2024 Alfaguara Novel Prize for “The Germans.”

He XXVII Alfaguara Prize This time it coincides with its 60th anniversary and has been awarded, unanimously, to Sergio del Molino and his work Germans. He had presented himself under the pseudonym Patricia Bieger and had nicknamed the work as The spirit of the staircase.

As we are told, the story is about a little-known topic in Spanish history in relation to the mutations of Nazism which had important consequences in today’s world.

The Alfaguara prize is endowed with 175 thousand dollarsa sculpture by Martín Chirino and the simultaneous publication throughout the Spanish-speaking territory.

“The novel was born from an essay.”

After the award decision, Sergio del Molino gave a press conference in which we were able to collect some of his statements.

What has caught our attention the most has been how much the author has emphasized that this yes it can be considered a pure novel, since his previous works had always been labeled as novels with a certain label. In fact, he insists on it because for him this is new. He also tells us, however, that he has used the same tools and approaches as with his previous books, so his mode of operation We understand that it has not changed.

In 1916, in the middle of the First World War, two ships arrived in Cádiz with more than six hundred Germans from Cameroon. They have surrendered at the Guinean border to the colonial authorities because Spain is a neutral country. They will settle, among other places, in Zaragoza and form a small community there that will not return to Germany. Among them was Eva and Fede’s great-grandfather, who, almost a century later, is found in the German cemetery in Zaragoza at the burial of Gabi, their older brother. Together with their father, they are the last survivors of the Schusters, a family that went on to form an important food business. But in these times the past can always come back to raise blisters.

Germans It is a choral novel narrated in the first person that is told in a multifaceted way, precisely because of this overall character. Some characters know the story or see it with a certain bias while others have different opinions. about the same facts.

Apparently, too, the story was born from an essay.

The construction of an identity in today’s world.

“We live in a time in which we are very concerned about identity, the construction of the self,” says Sergio del Molino.

The writer Rosa Montero, one of the members of the jury, already referred to the different thematic layers that the work has as an amalgamation of issues that give rise to reflection on them and identity seems to be one of the central axes. For Del Molino, identity is currently in full debate because we live in a world without a handle. For him, Germans It’s about this, about who we are through awareness of where we come from.

Obviously, the issue of immigration would have to come out during the press conference and the author wanted to emphasize that his topic is not about migrations, but rather about people who, even though they live in a country different from their own and even if they feel uprooted from it, have never felt rejection or rejection. xenophobia that is suffered in other types of migrant stories.

«It has nothing to do with the experience of mass immigration that has to face a lot of issues such as rejection, poverty…». «(The protagonists of the novel) They live in a Germany that they invented». «This is a very special and rarely seen uprooting».

Furthermore, Sergio del Molino assures us that, although in certain aspects it is a story that is out of the ordinary, it says a lot about all of us.

There are also Nazis.

It would be strange if this novel, titled Germans, will leave out the Nazis. I’m not saying it. Sergio says it. So yes, there is a Nazi presence because we will also discover among the letters that for the protagonists of the story That Germany awakens an enormous and almost romantic nostalgia not having experienced the stigma of being Nazis, nor the defeat, nor the bombings. They have not had to suffer the consequences of all that and, therefore, I understand that they use it as a certain sign of identity in a country (during the Franco era) that allowed them to maintain this identity.

There are Nazis and secrets, since the jury has also referred to the secret as another body and character in the novel. Also, a two-sided kind of secret. The secret that refers to what is not known, and the one that refers to what everyone knows, but no one tells.

For the jury, the other issue would be the conscience of the characters and the reader. He pushes the characters to the limit and tests their ability to be true to themselves.

Germans of Sergio del Molino, Alfaguara Award 2024will be in bookstores on March 21st.

We look forward to it.