Cristina Fernández Cubas said she was still coming to terms with receiving the Cervantes Prize when she spoke in Barcelona. The 81-year-old writer described the news as a complete surprise: she had been at home watching a film when she answered an unfamiliar phone number and learned the result from Spain’s culture minister.
Fernández Cubas welcomed the recognition as a tribute not only to her work but also to the short story as a literary form. When she began publishing in the 1980s, she said, the genre attracted little interest from publishers. She credited editor Beatriz de Moura with supporting her early collections, including “Mi hermana Elba” and “Los altillos de Brumal.”
She compared writing a short story to performing as a circus artist without a safety net. Unlike a novel, she said, a story depends on sustained tension from beginning to end and can lose its effect if the writer lets the initial spark fade. Restraint is also essential: what a story leaves unsaid matters as much as what it puts on the page.
The author said she has no fixed formula for writing and approaches each story as a new adventure. She writes mainly in the morning now, having moved on from the nocturnal routine she once likened to that of a vampire. She also said she writes to experience stories rather than to win prizes, and that the process helps her discover things about human behaviour.
Although her work is often associated with fantasy and horror, Fernández Cubas described it instead as “unsettling.” She said that feeling needs to be present in her own writing if it is to reach readers. She also stressed that the short story is a genre in its own right, not a stepping stone to the novel, though she has published three novels.
Fernández Cubas is the seventh woman to receive the Cervantes Prize. She said she was surprised by the distinction and welcomed the recognition of women writers, naming Ana María Matute, Carmen Martín Gaite and Carmen Laforet among the outstanding Spanish authors who came before her. She has not yet decided what she will say in her acceptance speech, but said she might reflect on her own path to reading “Don Quixote.”
Sources: El País Cultura.