Sonsoles Ónega faced the most difficult direct of his life on Sunday. Speaking after winning the Planeta prize, the most endowed literary award in the world. “It’s the most complicated thing I’ve done so far”, he admitted when the jury announced that his work, Las hijas de la criada – which will be published on November 8, as the finalist -, was the winner. The author dedicated the recognition to “writers with children and the children of writers” and said that it is “a novel about brave women who fought at sea for a hundred years without recognition” and that “at last the they will have”.
Fate is the driving force behind many of his novels. Was it to win the Planeta award?
I do not know. It’s something you always think won’t happen to you. But it is a huge support for my literary career. When I won the Fernando Lara I already realized that prizes help novels reach everywhere.
Since then have you submitted all your novels to competitions?
I ended up having a guide where all the awards were recorded. As a young man I introduced myself to everything there was. I got a few, but I was really excited about the Letras Award for Short Novel. From then on I knew I would become a writer.
What is it like to combine this facet with journalism?
I don’t know how to live without writing and I write where I can. This novel, the one given to me by El Planeta, was written in dressing rooms, with a notebook resting on my skirt and with parts written on the phone when I didn’t have paper to hand.
A frantic pace to which is now added promoting the award.
The best I can do is in the midst of chaos and thousands of obligations. When everything is quiet I get out of my place. And now I will continue to be installed in the tsunami.
He has before him the opportunity to devote himself to literature full time.
I know I’m still a part-time writer. I like journalist Sonsoles and what she writes. One complements the other.
So much so that your novel is inspired by a news story that you told on your show.
I learned that two girls had been swapped in a Logronyo hospital when they were born. It seemed to me that there was a novel behind it, although they never wanted to talk.
Do you hold out hope that, now yes, they will end up getting in touch?
I would love to meet and interview them.
The novel covers the first two thirds of the 20th century hand in hand with a Galician business family, the Valdés. Will anyone in the canning industry feel alluded to?
I doubt it. It is based on my imagination, although it is true that I incorporate anecdotes that exist, but they are the fusion of small scraps that allowed me to approach how the sea industry was built.
As in other of his novels, the singing voice is given to women.
There is nothing deliberate about the selection of characters. I feel more comfortable with female characters than male characters. Man has historically written woman. Maybe we have something to say about the voice of women in novels, but we’ve never had it easy. Hopefully a balance will be reached one day.
Do you think it will happen sooner rather than later?
Everything is more difficult, not only for being a woman, but for being a mother. It is not an ideological or gender issue, it is describing what is happening.
If you add to that that he is a well-known face… I don’t know if it means more pressure or help.
The reader feels that he knows you and that you are part of his life. If this helps sell more books, welcome. I will not give up my tag as a TV reporter who writes. But I want to clarify that I have never been called by a publisher to ask me to write a novel for the simple fact of being in the media.
