Sant Carles, May 7, 2025. — Writer Antonio Tocornal (San Fernando, Cádiz, 1964) has won the 8th Las Dalias International Short Story Prize for his story The Memory of Fingers, as unanimously decided by the jury, which evaluated 16 finalist works.

A total of 1,526 original stories from 32 countries were submitted for this eighth edition of the prize, which is endowed with €3,000.

The Winning Work

Antonio Tocornal claims the 8th Las Dalias International Short Story Prize with an emotional and haunting tale that presents a deeply poetic vision of a city devastated by war. With delicate yet unflinching prose, the author paints a portrait of ruins.

Through powerful imagery and a restrained narrative rhythm, Tocornal turns destruction into a form of art that transcends mere denunciation. The story resonates not only for its rawness and stylistic beauty but also for its ability to speak from absence. It is a lucid and moving meditation on the fragility of humanity, buried memory, and the painful certainty that sometimes all that remains is the echo of what we once were.

The Jury

The jury was composed of writer Maribel Andrés Llamero; author Alberto de la Rocha; Laura Ferrer Arambarri, director of Las Dalias Ibiza & Formentera Magazine; and poet Ben Clark, the prize’s coordinator.

Publication

The story will be published in both its original Spanish version and in English in the upcoming edition of Las Dalias Ibiza & Formentera Magazine.

The Award-Winning Author

Antonio Tocornal was born in San Fernando, Cádiz. He studied Fine Arts in Seville and, after a long period in Paris, settled permanently in Mallorca. His stories have received numerous awards, including some of the most prestigious in Spanish-language literature, such as the Gabriel Aresti, Ignacio Aldecoa, Gerald Brenan, and José Calderón Escalada prizes.

He combines his writing career with teaching, literary consultancy, editing, and style correction. He currently teaches an advanced narrative workshop at the Fuentetaja school in Palma de Mallorca and a narrative course in a master’s program at the University of Granada.

His novels include The Night I Could Have Seen Dizzy Gillespie Play (22nd Vargas Llosa Novel Prize, 2017), Bajamares(19th Córdoba Provincial Novel Prize, 2018), Birds in a Tin Sky (València Prize for Narrative in Spanish, Alfons el Magnànim, 2020), Malasanta (41st Felipe Trigo Novel Prize, 2021; finalist for the 29th Andalusian Critics’ Prize, 2022), and Árida (1st Francisco Ayala International Short Novel Prize, 2024).

His short story collection Cadillac Ranch won the 30th Andalusian Critics’ Prize (2023) and the 21st Setenil Prize (2024).

The Finalists

Out of the 1,526 stories that met the competition’s requirements, 16 were selected as finalists by a reading committee and submitted to the jury after several months of work. The finalist titles are: 137 Parkers; Now That April and May Are Gone; Amber; Understanding; With More Than Just Eyes; The Subtle Charm of Secondary Streets; The Mirror; The Garden Smells of Smoke; Snapshots; Party; The (Happy) Hen of Organic Golden Eggs; The Memory of Fingers; The Bad Ones; Blue Light; Last Entry from Loan Ardelean’s Diary; Period.

Previous Winners

In the first edition, Gonzalo Calcedo won with Third and Eighth; in the second, Nerea Pallares with The Offering; in the third, Pablo Aranda with Sánchez; in the fourth, Matías Candeira with Make a Wish; in the fifth, Santiago Casero with Even If We Love Them So Much; in the sixth, Argentinian writer Diego Vásquez Rivero with Laced to the Sky; and in the seventh edition, Victoria Trigo Bello with The Tsunami.

Photo Credit: Martine Heyvaert