Spain’s booksellers’ association honors cartoonist El Roto with its Premio Leyenda Award

Andrés Rábago, better known as El Roto, (Madrid, 1947) has won the unanimous praise of the jury for this year’s Premio Leyenda Award. They lauded the painter and cartoonist’s “raw and unflinching” vignettes that are accompanied by "steely, uncompromising” satire. The jury also highlighted the artist’s “constant concern for the most disadvantaged in society and his championing of the importance of reading, books and booksellers for creating a friendlier and more humane society". El Roto, who has who has also continued to paint (signing his work A. Rábago) worked throughout the seventies and eighties under the pseudonym of OPS in a wide range of publications, including Hermano Lobo, La Codorniz, Triunfo and Madriz. He gained a reputation and following for his references to the unconscious and his style that recalled surrealism and the Panic Movement. With the arrival of democracy, OPS eventually gave way to El Roto, whose social satire -- published in Diario 16, El Independiente and now in El País -- aims, according to the jury, to question the relationship between the individual and the masses and “alert the conscience to an anesthetizing reality."

Landeros (Alburquerque, Badajoz, 1948) won the Book of the Year Award in the fiction category. The jury said that his El balcón de invierno (The Winter Balcony) (Tusquets), is written "with a precise and precious language" and is "a journey, of implacable honesty, into memory. " The book is an odyssey through the scents, flavors and customs of the Extremadura of his childhood, and as well as those of Madrid where the author arrives with his family in the sixties.

The prize for Illustrated Book was awarded to El león y el pájaro (The Lion and the Bird)  (Tramuntana), by Marianne Dubuc, for the "sensitivity" the author uses to explain how friendship is "forged day by day, crumb by crumb", "without fanfare or wild passions. " The jury for the awards, which will be given out on on December 15, also chose a runner up in this category, La ballena (The Whale), by Benji Davies (Andana).