Remedios Zafra Alcaraz has been awarded Spain's National Essay Prize for 2025 for her work ‘El informe. Trabajo intelectual y tristeza burocrática’ (Anagrama, 2024), ..
as proposed by the jury that met yesterday. The prize, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, is worth €30,000.
The jury chose the work for “being a reflection on the objects of late modernity, a tribute to freedom and creative passion and, at the same time, a strong criticism of the conditions of intellectual work performance in the present due to its bureaucratic violence, administrative sadness, and technological dehumanization.”
In addition, the jury noted that ‘El informe. Trabajo intelectual y tristeza burocrática’ proposes “a form” of radical revolt, that of the reappropriation of time and culture as reactivators of intellectual enjoyment and pleasure. Through the beauty of her poetic prose, Remedios Zafra sharply denounces the mechanisms of production in the present day which, by neglecting the human aspect, lead to a self-discipline that slowly kills creative activity and, above all, undermines the health of jobs, with the consequent precariousness of the sector.
