Spain’s Liber20 Prizes: Elkar Bookstores, Netflix’s ‘El Vecino,’ and ZendaLibros

The Liber20 awards from the Spanish Federation of Publishers’ Guilds this year go to a Basque Country bookselling chain, a graphic novel adapted to television, and a literary site.

Organizers of the digital presentation of Barcelona’s Liber20 book fair have announced that the Elkar bookstore chain is the winner of this year’s Boixareu Ginesta award. The honor recognizes “those booksellers and bookstores that play an important role in the development and promotion of literary culture and contribute to the consolidation of the book chain in their fields of action.”

Elkar was established in 1974 in Bayonne and now has 16 locations in the Basque country and Navarra.

A point the Federation of Publishers’ Guilds (FGEE) makes—the federation produces the Feria Internacional del Libro—is that Elkar has made a specialty of “the linguistic realities of the territory, giving visibility to books published in Basque,” which is good for consumers and for publishers working at the local level.

In addition, the Netflix series El Vecino (The Neighbor) has won its prize for best audiovisual adaptation of a literary work.

Produced by Zeta Audiovisual, the show is being singled out for its adaptation of a graphic novel to the screen. The federation notes in its media messaging about the award today (September 18) that it’s looking to bring focus to the market’s comics sector.

The creators of the original book are Santiago García and Pepe Pérez, and the book is a publication of Astiberri Ediciones. Built around a story of an entrepreneur named Javier whose fortunes are fading—as is his relationship with Lola—when an alien falls onto him and passes on super powers to him. The screen development was led by Miguel Esteban and Raúl Navarro, with Nacho Vigalondo directing.

The federation has also chosen Zenda, a literary site for an award in the promotion of reading through digital media.

The site, the federation’s rationale says, “takes advantage of digital media to disseminate current events in publishing and literary activity.

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