Leonardo Padura receives Spain’s Premio Liber 2026 at Barcelona’s MNAC

Foto: Wikimedia Commons / Fronteiras do Pensamento – Luiz Munhoz (CC BY-SA 2.0)

October 1, 2026

Cuban writer Leonardo Padura collected the Premio Liber 2026 on the night of Wednesday, September 30, 2026, in the Oval Hall of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) in Barcelona during the Liber International Book Fair. The prize, given by Spain’s Federation of Publishers’ Guilds (FGEE), recognizes a career of “great international projection” and the “richness of registers and genres” in his work; Padura is the first Cuban author to receive it.

Before the ceremony, in an EFE interview carried by ABC and 20minutos, the 2015 Princess of Asturias Award winner for Literature spoke about his ties to Catalonia and Spain — he has published with Tusquets since 1996 — and said he has finished a first draft of a new novel featuring detective Mario Conde, now in his seventies, investigating an inheritance and a missing woman in 2025 Cuba.

“That they give me the Premio Liber today is very satisfying because all honorary awards have a very special value,” Padura said. After Barcelona his schedule includes Cosmopoética in Córdoba, Madrid and a trip to Mexico. Born in Havana in 1955, he continues to live in the Cuban capital.

Fuente: EFE / ABC; 20minutos; Federation of Spanish Publishers’ Guilds

Leonardo de la Caridad Padura Fuentes

Writer, Journalist, Essayist, Society, Literature

===BODY=== Leonardo Padura was born in La Habana in 1955. Since childhood he read detective novels in his native Mantilla, today he is a recognized writer who possesses a singular conception of the literary fact. Licensed in philology by the university of this city, he has worked as a screenwriter, journalist and critic.