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Núria Cadenes Wins VII Premi Proa for ‘Qui salva una vida’

The €40,000 Catalan prize recognizes a literary homage to a WWII escape network rooted in her family history.

Overview

  • Cadenes received the award on November 6 at Barcelona’s Museu Tàpies, with the prize valued at €40,000.
  • The jury—Xavier Pla, Mar Bosch, Anna Sáez Mateu, Vicenç Villatoro and Josep Lluch—praised the novel as lyrical and guided by a strong ethical pulse.
  • The book fictionalizes the Cerdanya escape network led by her great-uncle, priest Joan Domènech, alongside French priest Jean Ginoux.
  • Its focus falls on ordinary participants—hospital nuns, train crews, a cinema cashier known as “Betty Boop,” and committed communists—who helped Jews, Allied airmen and other fugitives.
  • Proa/Grup62 will publish the novel on November 12, with Cadenes presenting it as literature that preserves lives and deeds rather than a strict historical study.