From 16 June to 30 September, the sixth edition of the Literary Journalism Prize will be open, with which the Master's in Literary Journalism, Communication and Humanities of the UAB, in collaboration with the Publications Service, distinguishes novel-lat reports and unpublished works of documentary literature in Catalan. The rules can be consulted on the website of the master's degree. The winning work will be announced in December.

The Master's Degree in Literary Journalism, Communication and Humanities at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) was created in 2012 in response to the need for a broad and consistent training in communication and humanities. The studies stand out for making use of its own methodology in quality journalism and writing resources in composition and style. In 2013, the Master's degree promoted the 1st UAB Literary Journalism Award with the aim of recognising the best works of documentary literature and novel-lat reportage arising from the final master's degree projects (TFM) of its students, with participation open to everyone. Since then, the different editions of the award have been organised with the collaboration of several private publishers, such as Editorial Base and Ángulo Editorial. The 6th Literary Journalism Prize will have the participation of the UAB Publications Service, which will be in charge of publishing and distributing the winning work in paper and digital format.

According to the new 2025 rules, the works submitted must be unpublished, written in Catalan and have a length of between 130,000 and 170,000 characters (including white spaces). The deadline for submitting original works opens on Monday 16 June and closes on Tuesday 30 September.

Over the years, the jury for the Prize has been made up of Master's lecturers who are also writers, such as Miqui Otero, Juan Pablo Villalobos, Esteve Plantada, Eileen Truax and Begoña Gómez Urzaiz, and other important writers on the national and international literary or journalistic scene, such as Leila Guerriero, Gaby Martínez and Txell Feixas, among many others. The jury of this sixth edition will be made public before the closing date and its verdict will be announced at a prize-giving ceremony in December 2025, in a place to be determined.

Previous calls for entries and winning works

The prize has been held biannually since 2013, the first two times with the collaboration of Editorial Base, which published two anthologies of the winning pieces. The first was Cuando encuentres a Malinowski y otros relatos de periodismo literario (2013), with pieces on the investigation of an old Argentinian poet lost in Barcelona in the 1970s, the ETA attack on the petrochemical plant in Tarragona and the text, both funny and tragic, about an enterprising housewife who, faced with the crisis, decides to open a brothel in her own home. The second call for entries (2015) gave rise to Ritmos para el paraíso, also with three stories: one about the survival of migration in Barcelona, another that investigates a case of flagrant (and terrible) miscarriage of justice, and a last one that deals with the tradition of post-war children in the Ebro of collecting scrap metal from the final battle of the Civil War, a custom that became a lifelong hobby and true domestic museums, a very different approach to the war conflict.

The last three calls for entries for the Prize have been made with Ángulo Editorial, which has published the winning works: 23 días de diciembre, by Marc Amat, a mystery case about the death of a relative; Menors i migrants, by Marina Sonadellas, a social worker in a centre for migrant minors, which was also published in Spanish by Polen Editorial; and La Bodega, by Miguel Peña, about the closure of the famous Rafel bar in the Sant Antoni market, which deals with the gentrification and touristification of Barcelona through the closure of a historic bar where twenty-four hours were spent, a work inspired by Joseph Mitchell's mythical work on the oldest bar in New York. Dozens of works have also been published that have not won in recent years, but which are of high quality. Some of the most recent are Las niñas de Elna, by Marc Solanes, or Santa Carolina, by Julieta Morales.

Data

6th Literary Journalism Prize

Organised by: Master's Degree in Literary Journalism, Communication and Humanities at the UAB.

In collaboration with: Publications Service of the UAB

Entries: from 16 June to 30 September 2025

Rules and further information: https://periodisme-literari.uab.cat

Desinformación y poder. Alquimias de la persuasión is the latest title in the ‘Aldea Global’ collection, which is co-published by the university publishers: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Universitat Jaume I, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Universitat de València. The book is the work of Raúl Rodríguez Ferrándiz, Professor of Semiotics of Mass Communication at the University of Alicante, who specialises in post-truth politics, disinformation, conspiracy theories and ‘fake news’.

In Desinformación y poder. Alquimias de la persuasión, the author dismantles the slogan ‘information is power’, to open our eyes to a current media society where truth has become the true value that is traded on the market: it is privatised, viralised and monetised without any relation to the facts. This book provides a brief introduction to ‘trumpology’, the Cambridge Analytica case and computational propaganda, the Pizzagate case and the role of Wikileaks, but also refers to those who contribute to polarisation by attacking immigration, feminism or LGTBI rights. It discusses the content (in)moderation strategies of Facebook and X, and the advertisers who fund, often unwittingly, pseudo-media that spread misleading news or promote hate, the conspiracies that lied with the ‘plandemia’ story when the virus arrived, and now continue to deny climate change or scare with the Great Replacement. It analyses our penchant for rumours and novelistic lies and for sharing them for a handful of ‘likes’. Finally, a coda is dedicated to the DANA that hit the province of Valencia and Trump's second victory in the US elections.

The work has been selected by the Unión de Editoriales Universitarias Españolas (UNE) to star in the twenty-sixth episode of its podcast ‘Libros para comprender’. The episode is a conversation with Raúl Rodríguez Ferrándiz and Maite Simón, author and editor of PUV (Publicaciones de València), respectively. The programme can be listened to on the main podcasting platforms (Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube Podcast and iVoox) and also seen on YouTube Podcast, through the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1daLMPUbjk.

On Thursday 13 February, at 7 p.m., the book will be presented at the Documenta bookshop in Barcelona (Carrer de Pau Claris, 144), with the following speakers: Virginia Luzón Fernández, Professor of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising and Vice Rector of Communication at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Catalina Gayà Morlà, Serra Hunter Lecturer in the Department of Media, Communication and Culture at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and member of the Board of Aldea Global; and Raúl Rodríguez Ferrándiz, Professor of Semiotics of Mass Communication at the University of Alicante and author of the book.

On Tuesday 15 October, at 1pm, the Faculty of Law of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) will host the presentation of the InnovaDret Group, as part of the University's Innovation Week.

The conference will include a talk entitled ‘Teaching innovation as the backbone of the Law degree’, given by Dr. Josep Cañabate Pérez, coordinator of InnovaDret; a debate focused on the work in the Service Learning (ApS) modality; and the presentation of the first volume of the book series ‘InnovaDret’, published by the UAB Publications Service last June.

The book is entitled Innovació docent i aprenentatge jurídic. Desafiaments i oportunitats del nou model docent del grau de Dret and gathers the works presented by the professors of the research group in the periodic seminars that have been developed in the same Faculty. The work focuses on teaching innovation within the new model of the Bachelor's Degree in Law and aims to share experiences and tools to improve teaching practice.

More information about the conference at: https://webs.uab.cat/setmanainnovacio/activitats-2024/innovadret/

The presentation of the fourth volume of the poetry collection “Álbumes Versàlia” will take place on Thursday, January 16, at 6:30 p.m., at the Jaimes bookstore in Barcelona (Valencia street, 318).

The latest book is entitled Por/Poder and is illustrated with twenty-seven drawings by the painter Jerónimo Prieto. The volume brings together the contributions of thirty-one poets on the chosen theme, headed by the poet and translator Arnau Pons and the poet Chantal Maillard, who, with texts written expressly for the occasion, open the first section: Caplletres.

The second is an anthology of poems from different periods and languages on the theme, freely commented afterwards by a large number of poets, such as Nuria Busquet, Eduardo Moga, Josep Mi. Ripoll, Gemma Arimany, Emilia Conejo, Esteban Martínez Serra, Víctor Obiols, Xavier Farré, Luz Pichel, Josep Gerona Fumara, Jordi Llavina, Raquel Casas, Jaume Creus, or Joaquim Sala-Sanahuja, among others.

In the third section, all the participating poets offer us their unpublished poems. And the book closes with an appendix with the original versions of the translated poems.

The presentation will consist of the reading of some of the poems commented by the poets participating in the edition of the book: Víctor Obiols, Jaume Creus, Gemma Arimany, Empar Sàez, Susanna Gonzàlez Túrigas, Víctor Mañosa, Josep Ma. Ripoll, Eduardo Moga, Esteban Martínez Serra, Arnau Pons and Josep Gerona Fumàs.

The presentation of the fourth volume of the poetry collection ‘Álbumes Versàlia’ will take place on Thursday 28 November at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Casal Pere Quart in Sabadell (Carrer de Lacy, 11).

The latest book is entitled Por/Poder and is illustrated with twenty-seven drawings by the painter Jerónimo Prieto. The volume brings together the contributions of thirty-one poets on the chosen theme, headed by the poet and translator Arnau Pons and the poet Chantal Maillard, who, with texts written expressly for the occasion, open the first section: Caplletres.

The second is an anthology of poems from different periods and languages on the theme, freely commented on afterwards by a large number of poets, such as Nuria Busquet, Eduardo Moga, Josep Mi. Ripoll, Gemma Arimany, Emilia Conejo, Esteban Martínez Serra, Víctor Obiols, Xavier Farré, Luz Pichel, Josep Gerona Fumara, Jordi Llavina, Raquel Casas, Jaume Creus, and Joaquim Sala-Sanahuja, among others.

In the third section, all the participating poets offer us their unpublished poems. The book closes with an appendix containing the original versions of the poems translated.

The presentation ceremony will consist of the reading of some of the poems with commentary by the actors Enric López and Mi. Antonia Bartolí, and with the musical intervention of Joan Alavedra on the accordion.

On Wednesday, June 25 at 6:30 p.m., Espai Betúlia (Enric Borràs St. 43-47, Badalona) will host the presentation of the book Pompeu Fabra in Badalona. History of a Mural, a work that tells the story behind the mural dedicated to the renowned linguist at Can Casals, created by Badalona-based artist Artur Gil.

The event will feature Professor David Paloma, artist Artur Gil, and journalist and author Albert Costa, who brings to life in this book the connection between Fabra and the city.

An excellent opportunity to discover this artistic and cultural initiative that further enriches Fabra’s legacy in Badalona.

The Casal de Barri Transformadors in Barcelona hosted the presentation of the book Feminismo no es sexismo. Conversations on gender and inequality, from the collection ‘El espejo y la lámpara’ by Edicions UAB. The book proposes a critical reflection on the displacement that part of the feminist discourse has suffered. María Jesús Izquierdo and Marc Barbeta-Viñas, members of the UAB Department of Sociology and authors of the book, took part in the event. It took place on 20 March, at 19h.

This work proposes a critical reflection on the displacement that part of the feminist discourse has undergone, both in terms of the analysis of social reality and in terms of the movement's objectives. The text begins with a discussion between Marc Barbeta-Viñas and María Jesús Izquierdo, one of the most relevant sociologists in the study of gender inequality, and moves on to the main issues that currently occupy the feminist agenda and discourse.

Book sample:

https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=Ja03EQAAQBAJ&pg=GBS.PA6&hl=ca

The books of the 2024 edition of the Literary Awards, jointly organised every year by the City Council of Cerdanyola del Vallès and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, were presented yesterday, Thursday 7 November, at 1pm, at the Institut Pozas in Cerdanyola del Vallès (Calle del Águila, 65).

The winners were announced last May at the awards ceremony held at the UAB. Carla Clúa Alcón, with her work Pausa, sucre, Sevilla, was the winner of the 15th ‘Caterina Albert’ short story prize for young people. Josep Antoni Aguilar Àvila, with the work Ballar amb els espectres, and Josep Domènech Ponsatí, with the work Eixint de fer, were declared ex-aequo winners of the 29th ‘Miquel Martí i Pol’ poetry prize. Miquel Ribas Figueras, with his work Ilha do Farol, became the winner of the XXX ‘Valldaura-Memorial Pere Calders’ novel prize.

The event was attended by the Mayor of Cerdanyola del Vallès, Carlos Cordón; the Councillor for Education of Cerdanyola del Vallès, Pilar Adell; the Vice-Rector for Innovation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Rosa María Sebastián; and the authors Josep Domènech Ponsatí and Miquel Ribas. Carla Clúa Alcón (Tarragona) and Josep Antoni Aguilar Àvila (València) were present, through videos with a few words of gratitude for the publication of their books.

The final part of the event included the presentation of the terms and conditions of the Literary Awards 2025, which will open for submissions on 13 December.

On Wednesday, September 24 at 6:45 p.m., within the framework of the 43rd Setmana del Llibre en Català, the first two volumes of Literatura Catalana de la Postmodernitat will be presented. The work is co-published by the University of Barcelona Press and the Autonomous University of Barcelona Publications Service.

The edition was curated by Jordi Marrugat, Víctor Martínez-Gil, and Núria Santamaria, who will take part in the event together with the writer Màrius Serra, who will introduce the presentation.

The event will take place at Stage 1 of the Setmana del Llibre en Català (Passeig de Lluís Companys, Barcelona).

Further presentations are planned at other literary events: the Plaça del Llibre in València (date to be confirmed) and the 2nd Congress on Postmodernity, scheduled for December.

On Tuesday 27 May at 7 p.m., the auditorium of the Ateneo Sant Cugat will host the presentation of the book ‘Feminismo no es sexismo. Conversaciones sobre género y desigualdad’, by María Jesús Izquierdo, PhD in Economics and retired lecturer at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and Marc Barbeta-Viñas, lecturer in Sociology at the UAB.

Although admission is free, prior registration is recommended on the Ateneu's website: https://santcugatenc.miram.cloud/MiramModular/buscador/buscador.jsp?g=1&c=9902&a=6594