Spanish writer Angeles Caso wins Premio Planeta award for novel on plight of immigrant women

Spain: novel on immigrant women wins major prize

MADRID — Spanish writer and journalist Angeles Caso has won the country’s most lucrative literary award for a novel about the ordeals of women from poor countries who emigrate in search of a better life.

The Premio Planeta was announced late Thursday at a ceremony in Barcelona and carries a €601,000 ($890,000) cash stipend.

Caso’s novel “Contra el Viento” (Against the Wind) is about the plight of a woman from Cape Verde who emigrates first to Portugal and then settles in Spain, and how she suffers along the way.

Caso said the character is based on a woman who worked for her as a nanny and helped look after Caso’s daughter.

In an acceptance speech, Caso said her book addresses “the tremendous struggle that these 21st-century heroines must wage from the time they are born, first in their countries, which are so poor and hostile, and then in a setting as complex as ours.”

Caso said the sacrifices made by women such the character in her book render life easier for women like herself. “They are fundamental in our society, enabling the rest of us to get out and work, keep having children and lead dignified lives,” Caso said.

The prize was founded in 1952 by Planeta, one of Spain’s top publishing companies, and is open to both Spaniards and Latin Americans.

Previous winners include Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru and the late Spaniard Camilo Jose Cela, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1989.