Phoenix 24
Two decades of reporting become Latin American memory.
BARCELONA, Spain | June 2026
Spanish journalist Jacobo García has won the seventh Anagrama Chronicle Prize for Años luz, a book built from 22 years of reporting across Latin America. The jury selected the work from 49 manuscripts submitted from 11 countries and awarded García the 10,000-euro prize. The volume will be published in Spain on September 9, 2026, before reaching Argentina in early 2027. The recognition places García’s long career as a correspondent within the renewed international visibility of narrative journalism written in Spanish.
Años luz brings together experiences gathered during García’s work in Mexico, Central America, Venezuela, Colombia and Haiti. Rather than presenting a conventional chronological memoir, the book draws from unpublished notes, newsroom debates and conversations with colleagues after difficult assignments. Those materials reconstruct how stories are investigated, written and emotionally processed by journalists working under pressure. The result connects public events with the private observations that rarely appear in the finished article.
The book is organized around five thematic areas: violence, authoritarianism, climate change and natural disasters, courageous women and the strength of culture. Through those axes, García revisits some of the defining political and social episodes of recent Latin American history. The structure allows different countries and periods to speak to one another without reducing the region to a single narrative. It also reflects the author’s interest in identifying recurring patterns beneath apparently disconnected events.
Political power occupies a central place in the work, although the book avoids a doctrinaire or militant perspective. García recounts experiences involving leaders such as Hugo Chávez, Álvaro Uribe, Nayib Bukele, Enrique Peña Nieto and Jovenel Moïse. These figures appear not only as holders of office but as actors within systems shaped by conflict, institutional weakness and public expectation. The political dimension emerges through scenes, encounters and consequences rather than ideological proclamations.
Años luz also includes chronicles involving gang members, drug traffickers and radical priests, expanding the portrait beyond presidential palaces and official institutions. The book moves toward people who inhabit the margins of public power but often reveal its real effects more clearly. García’s reporting follows communities exposed to violence, inequality and state abandonment while also documenting forms of resistance. That approach strengthens the book’s value as both testimony and narrative construction.
Culture provides another route into the region. The volume includes encounters with figures such as Chavela Vargas and Shakira, alongside references to María Sabina and the women known as Las Patronas, who assist migrants traveling aboard freight trains in Veracruz. These stories broaden the concept of political reporting by showing how music, memory, spirituality and solidarity shape collective life. The book treats culture not as an escape from crisis but as one of the forces through which communities survive it.
The jury was composed of prominent figures in Spanish-language literature and journalism, including Martín Caparrós, Leila Guerriero, Juan Villoro, Carlo Feltrinelli and Silvia Sesé. Their decision reinforces the position of the prize as an important platform for long-form nonfiction and literary reportage. The award is supported by the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation and maintains an alliance with the Hay Festival. As part of the recognition, García will participate in the festival’s 2026 edition in Segovia.
The Anagrama Chronicle Prize was created to encourage narrative journalism in Spanish and recognize authors capable of combining factual rigor with literary construction. Its focus responds to a growing demand for books that explain reality through reporting while preserving the complexity of individual voices and lived experience. In a media environment dominated by speed, short formats and constant updates, the prize supports work that requires time, immersion and sustained observation. García’s project fits that tradition by transforming decades of notebooks into a coherent interpretation of a continent.
Born in Monforte de Lemos, Lugo, in 1976, García began his journalistic career at the Spanish radio network COPE. He later spent more than two decades working as a correspondent in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean for organizations including El Mundo, Associated Press and El País. Since 2023, he has worked from the Madrid newsroom of El País. His career has placed him close to political upheaval, organized violence, migration crises and natural disasters across the region.
His previous recognition includes work connected to the Gabo Prize for Innovation in 2017, as well as the Gabo Prize for best coverage and the True Story Award in 2021. Those distinctions reflect a professional trajectory shaped by collaborative reporting and sustained attention to complex subjects. Años luz now converts that accumulated experience into a single volume with a more personal and reflective architecture. The prize acknowledges not only the finished manuscript but also the years of fieldwork behind it.
The title suggests distance, time and the challenge of looking back at events that once demanded immediate reporting. A correspondent usually writes against deadlines, but a book allows facts to be reconsidered after their consequences have become clearer. García uses that distance to revisit what journalism captured and what it may have left outside the frame. The narrative therefore becomes an examination of memory as much as a record of events.
The book arrives at a moment when journalism across Latin America faces increasing pressure from authoritarian governments, criminal organizations, economic fragility and digital disinformation. Reporters continue working under threats while newsrooms confront shrinking resources and polarized audiences. In that context, a work covering 22 years of correspondence also functions as evidence of the persistence required to document the region. Its publication affirms that long-form journalism remains capable of preserving experiences that daily coverage can quickly leave behind.
Años luz transforms professional notebooks into a broader map of Latin American power, vulnerability and cultural endurance. Its recognition by the Anagrama jury confirms the continuing relevance of the chronicle as a form capable of joining evidence, memory and narrative depth. Jacobo García’s achievement also highlights the value of returning to old assignments with new questions. The book does not merely recount what happened, but examines what those years reveal when viewed together.
Lo visible y lo oculto, en contexto. / The visible and the hidden, in context.