On the occasion of this anniversary, the contest takes a step forward and is presented in the format of a literary gala, an evening that will combine literature, gastronomy and celebration and will take place on Friday, March 27, 2026 at the restaurant Es Cruce de Sant Rafel. The event can also be followed live on the Internet, thus extending its reach beyond the islands.

A literary gala with distinguished guests

The organization has confirmed the attendance of the writer Javier Moro, to which will be added the presence of the main cultural authorities of Ibiza and Formentera, as well as other relevant names in the literary field to be announced in the coming weeks.

There are limited places to attend the gala in person. Those interested can purchase their ticket, which includes the literary dinner, for 33 euros through the following link: https://www.ibizaeditions.com/producto/tique-gala-premis-de-les-lletres-2026/

A special edition for the tenth anniversary of the event

To commemorate the first ten years of the Premios de las Letras Pitiusas, the organization has assembled a team composed of Gabriel Torres Chalk, PhD in Philology; Jean Pierre Quiroz, collaborator of Melqart Media; Reinhard Huamán Mori, poet; Toni Martí, cultural promoter; Raquel Molero, philologist, and Ramon Mayol, editor.

In this anniversary edition, the artist Maria José Marí Bufí will be in charge of creating the commemorative figures that the winners will receive: small recreations of the defense towers of the islands, converted into a symbol of this tenth edition.

• «Giving handicrafts as a gift is giving roots»: María José Marí Bufí and the handmade Ibicencan tradition

The official poster of the contest, illustrated by Gabriel Torres Chalk, accompanies all communications and activities related to the awards.

Honorary Award for the Santa Eulària Reading Club

The Award of Honor of the Pitiusas Letters 2026 will be awarded to the Santa Eulària Reading Club, in recognition of its trajectory and vitality. This is the longest-running reading club in Ibiza and Formentera, a key space in promoting the reading habit and the meeting around books.

Literary call for entries still open

The contest is still open for the reception of manuscripts. Authors over 16 years of age can participate with a single unpublished work in Catalan or Spanish, in the modalities of short story or poetry.

In the case of short stories, the texts should be between 5 and 10 pages long, while poetic works should have between 40 and 80 verses. The works must be sent under a pseudonym to the following e-mail addresses: [email protected] [email protected]

The winners and finalists will receive a diploma and the publication of their works in physical and digital format. In addition, the winning works will receive a commemorative figure and a poem from the winning collection of poems will be set to music, both in Catalan and Spanish.

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• Sant Carles hosts the traditional Christmas concert by pianist María José Perete

La entrada The Pitiusas Letters Awards celebrate 10 years with a great literary gala in Ibiza se publicó primero en La Voz De Ibiza.

Thanks to its perseverance and the enthusiasm of its members, the club has consolidated a space where literature lovers can share readings, discuss ideas and discover new voices. Its trajectory demonstrates that reading, in addition to an individual pleasure, can be a meeting point that strengthens the cultural life of Santa Eulària.

A round table to celebrate the written word

To commemorate these two decades, on Saturday, November 8 at 8:30 p.m., the Villa del Río Municipal Library (Joan Tur Street, 9) will host a round table discussion with writers who have participated in the club throughout its history. During the event, the authors will share their experiences, present their most recent works and answer questions from the audience.

Among the participants are Vicent Tur, Toni Montserrat, Joan Mayans, Helena Tur, Rebecca Beltrán, Cristina Amanda Tur (CAT) and Iolanda Bonet, who will also pay tribute to the first coordinator of the club. The event will also have the collaboration of Llibreria Mediterrània, which will install a point of sale to purchase books and get dedications from the guest authors.

With this event, the club and the City Council of Santa Eulària celebrate not only its longevity, but also its essential role in promoting reading and supporting local literary creation, reaffirming the value of culture as an engine of community.

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• Myth, music and poetry come together in Ibiza to revive the god Bes

La entrada Two decades reading together: the literary club that has made history in Santa Eulària se publicó primero en La Voz De Ibiza.

El Arropiero. The deconstruction of a monster, published by Balàfia Postals. The book is already on sale in bookstores, on the website balafiapostals.com and will soon be available on other digital platforms (such as Casa del Libro). In the context of the presentation of the book in Ibiza (this Friday 17 at 20:00, in Sa Nostra Sala), they have explained to La Voz de Ibiza about the behind the scenes of the production and writing of the book, which seeks to understand the murderer and the context in which he committed his crimes.

Why do you claim that «never before had the history of the murderer been so thoroughly investigated»?
-Cristina Amanda Tur: Because when we reviewed everything that has been published on the Arropiero we realized that, to begin with, there was no book that went into the subject in depth or that updated the information from a complete and contemporary perspective, including both the facts and a serious criminological analysis. Much of what we have found (with honorable exceptions that are cited in the book) are plagiarisms of plagiarisms and superficial reports, without citing sources and without the slightest analysis of who Manuel Delgado Villegas really was, with no intention of understanding the criminal. We have resorted to all possible sources in order to understand and analyze him, beyond his crimes. My interest as a criminologist and journalist was, of course, to understand him, not to list some crimes that are already well-known. What arethe particularities of the book?
-CAT: It is written as an extensive journalistic report that includes, as I said, an important criminological analysis. And also psychiatric. For this, we have counted on psychiatrists who dealt with the Arropiero, in the same way that we have counted on the statements of policemen and lawyers who participated in the case. We could also include, among the particularities, that we have paid a lot of attention to the context in which the Arropiero’s crimes took place: in the final stage of a dictatorship and at a time when serial killers were not yet spoken of and the FBI was beginning to study this type of murderers from a perspective that went far beyond the investigation of the crimes.

How was theresearch?
-Héctor Escandell: the research has been long and complicated. The documentation process has been carried out with a combination of historical newspaper archives, audiovisual material and first-person testimonies. Although the events described in the book took place more than sixty years ago, we have had the opportunity to interview a significant number of people related to the case. Among those interviewed we can highlight Salvador Ortega and Manuel Alcalá, the inspectors of Puerto de Santa María who managed to catch Arropiero and who later accompanied him, together with the rest of the members of the judicial retinue, to different points of the Spanish geography to carry out the reconstructions of his crimes.

What place does Ibiza occupy in the history of the Arropiero?
-CAT: In Ibiza, the Arropiero murdered, in July 1967, one of his victims, a French tourist whom he suffocated and raped in Can Planes, a house in Sant Jordi. This case is especially significant because an American was arrested for the crime and spent a year in prison. In 1971, the Arropiero, was arrested in Puerto de Santa Maria for strangling his girlfriend and, to everyone’s surprise, began to confess to crimes committed in different places in Spain, France and Italy, including that of the French tourist. I understand that the role of the agents is a prominent part of the book.What is themost significant?
-CAT: Indeed, the agents of the Criminal Investigation Brigade and the judge of the case carried out an unprecedented investigation in Spain. And very unorthodox.

They traveled with the murderer to different parts of the country to reconstruct his crimes, they never took him in handcuffs, they treated him as a friend to guarantee that he would continue collaborating and they even took him to Tibidabo to have fun and bought him clothes at the Corte Inglés. One of the policemen really talks about the Arropiero as if he were his friend. What has struck you most during the research and writing of the book?
-CAT: The complexity of the criminal, the enormous differences that can be found between his crimes and the sum of factors that made him a murderer. Manuel Delgado Villegas is not a conventional serial killer and that makes him very interesting but also very complicated to unravel. – EHE: The explosive personality of the Arropiero and the relationship of friendship or false friendship that he established with the members of the judicial commission. An interested relationship, but one that has left us fascinating moments, almost surreal, that have gone down in the history of Spanish criminology. Let’s remember that, during the trips to reconstruct the crimes, the Arropiero, on occasions, refused to collaborate with the agents if they did not attend to his bizarre requests, which could range from taking him to a luxury restaurant to visiting a zoo or an amusement park. Best of all, these moments are photographically documented. Some of these images are in the book.

What can you tell us about the audiovisual products on the subject that are in development?
-HE: There are two projects in development: a fiction series, entitled ‘El rastro del Arropiero’, and the feature film ‘Ibiza 67’, based on the case of Jules Morton Abramovitz, the American who spent a year in the Ibiza detention center for a crime that, in reality, had been committed by the Arropiero. These two projects are already written and have been acquired by Rmvistar, an American sales agency dedicated to the representation of films and series in audiovisual markets. Their job is to find the right partner, be it a production company, TV channel or streaming platform, to raise the projects from an economic perspective. And there is a third option: to make a docuseries based on the book, but that project has not yet been developed.

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• «Who Killed Laura Palmer?»: ‘Twin Peaks’ mastermind passes away

La entrada The book that tells the story of the Arropiero as never before: «He was not a conventional serial killer,» say its authors. se publicó primero en La Voz De Ibiza.

• From professional soccer player to writer, Martín Monroy presents his first book: «There was something in soccer that was not enough for me».

The work is the first published by former professional footballer Martín Monroy, of Uruguayan origin, who played in Ibiza in Sant Jordi and Sant Josep after an extensive tour of teams in his native country and others in Latin America. Monroy published Trampantojo last July and presented it in Montevideo first and in Es jardí, Sa Caleta, in August. «There was something about soccer that wasn’t enough for me. A place I wanted to get to and with soccer I couldn’t get there», he explained in an interview with this media at that time, about the origins of his passion for writing (he also had a column in Periódico de Ibiza) and of this book. The presentation will take place at Kiko Serra at 8:30 p.m., with free admission.

 

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A post shared by Martín (@martinmonroy2189).

La entrada This Thursday the book ‘Trampantojo, notas de un futbolista’ will be presented at the Penya Esportiva Sant Jordi stadium. se publicó primero en La Voz De Ibiza.

Cervantes was not awarded any prizes. They plagiarized the second part of Don Quixote. He was in jail. Cervantes was a great git. . Un pobrecillo. Solo tenía el talento y la gracia», ha afirmado en una rueda de prensa en la sede de la RAE, tras obtener ayer martes este reconocimiento. Precisamente, el escritor ha reconocido que está «contento» por recibir el Premio Cervantes, un «hermoso» galardón, y ha elogiado a la lengua española por ser un idioma «diverso, solemne y a la vez cómico y rápido». «La lengua española es una lengua de muchas patrias, no solo la castellana. Es el don de lenguas», ha indicado. Pombo se ha referido a la ironía, recurso destacado en el fallo del jurado, y sobre la que ha advertido que puede ser «mortal» para el irónico. «La ironía cervantina es no tenérselo creído. No es un sentimiento primario, es secundario», ha afirmado antes de añadir que escribir es «complicado» porque «tardas mucho en las novelas» y porque se tiene que leer «muchas cosas». «Nunca terminas de estar satisfecho», ha subrayado. «La ironía puede ser mortal para el irónico, porque también es no tomar nada en serio. Eso es mortal. Por eso es un arma de doble filo. La frase de no tenérselo creído es muy importante porque lo que sale es un producto reflexivo», ha comentado. El fallo del jurado destacó este martes del escritor español de 85 años su «extraordinaria personalidad creadora, su lírica singular y su original narración«, además de su «notabilísimo nivel como poeta y ensayista, a lo que se une ser uno de los grandes novelistas del español».

La entrada Álvaro Pombo, winner of the Cervantes Prize 2024: «Cervantes was a sucker, he didn’t win any prize». se publicó primero en La Voz De Ibiza.

So, at his request, these humble lines are in memory of Juan Izquierdo.

The talk with Monroy is for the publication and presentation of his first book, Trampantojo, notes of a soccer player (Editorial Vecina). The presentation was yesterday in Es jardí, Sa Caleta, weeks after he presented it in his homeland.

It is necessary to review the steps that led him from the soccer fields to turn to writing. A native of Montevideo, he grew up with the aroma and rhythm of the port internalized: his father was a sailor. Today, the sea, its only scent of salt, gives him calm. Perhaps that is partly why he chooses, at this moment, to make the island of Ibiza his home: «It takes me back to my childhood».

Monroy has been involved in soccer since he was a child. He remembers going to school, training, returning tired to sleep and starting all over again. In Uruguay he played in La Escalinata, River, youth in Deportivo Uruguay, debuted in first team in Rentistas, Sud América. He went to play in Brazil (where he was deceived with the contract, he was promised double what he was finally paid and thus he knew the «betrayal»), returned to Uruguay and Sud America, Rocha, Albion. He started working in a bookstore while playing for Basáñez and finally left professional soccer. He lived in Madrid as sporting director of Aula, but, before that, Ibiza: he played in Sant Jordi and Sant Josep.

«Soccer led me to live in other countries, to play soccer and earn money for it, to be a professional, to be a profession, to train every day. It also made my body ache a lot, to have to hide some injuries because you have to play on weekends, that this is your economic income but to deal with the uncertainty when a contract is ending or when you are just starting, to what it is to be a foreigner, to have all eyes on you because you have to perform, the competitiveness… and to see a lot of friends and teammates who were left along the way and how their lives were torn apart», he expresses, curiously just before the news of the death of his compatriot circulates.

-There is little talk about what we could call the «B side» of a soccer player’s life, isn’t there?

-Yes, it’s a profession in which you are shaped. From the age of 13 you are competing and you miss out on a lot of things from your youth. You compete at a certain level that becomes harder and harder if you want to be a professional. At times you share with the best and you can’t fail. You know that if you fail, you’re out. Or if you had no press. Besides, I don’t like lightness, and lightness leads to a show, bread and circuses. But a lot of things happen in soccer, not only what is on TV. Sometimes you don’t get paid for a month. Or you can’t commit yourself too much to certain issues in life because six months later you’re moving again. And there are few people who make guita (money).

«It’s a job you do every day and with your body. You think you take care of it and it’s not like that. My left knee was already broken. I had thought about stopping playing even as an amateur, my body already hurt a lot. But there is something in the game that touches me and that cannot be satisfied… training, shooting, definition, that goes where I want it to go. Those things touch me something that I associate with joy. Finally, I finished breaking my knee and now I have to wear a knee brace to walk, I have surgery next month. I’m on leave from the club in Madrid where I was working,» he adds.

Martín Monroy, Ibiza, soccer and writing

If soccer opened the door to Ibiza, Ibiza opened the door for him to develop as a writer.

Although there was already a seed planted in him. He remembers writing some texts as a child: «There was something in soccer that was not enough for me. There was a place I wanted to get to, but I couldn’t get there with soccer.

He published in some sports portals when he was in Uruguay. Then, something else sparked when he heard Agustín Lucas, another Uruguayan soccer player, also a poet, recite his poem La Pasionaria after Sud América won the B championship in 2013 and went to first division. «The poem talks about the soccer player, and says something like ‘poor, powerful, poor for sale, we are mediocre even if they lie to us,'» Martín says.

In the age of social networks, he shared some of his writings on Facebook and Instagram. And one day, playing in Ibiza, he went one night to see La Vela Puerca, an Uruguayan band, play at Las Dalias. The journalist Manu Gon, with whom he was already connected in the virtual world, read his text and suggested and proposed it to be published in the Periódico de Ibiza. There he met Agustí Sintes Vallés, who was director, today director and founder of La Voz de Ibiza and who proposed him to continue writing with a regular column.

«I was already looking for other ways of life, looking to travel other paths. Now I understand that I was also looking to escape a little. I needed to go through certain processes that would be useful for my development as a human being,» he reflects.

‘Trompe l’oeil, notes from a soccer player’.

-There is a prejudice that makes it difficult to think of soccer players as writers as well. Do you agree?

-Yes, I live with that prejudice.

-And what is this coexistence like?

-At the moment, very good. But a certain amount of time has to pass. Like when you are a player: certain matches have to pass for the fans to get to know you, to trust you, for you to give them joy. No matter how you perform that weekend, you know that there is something else. Something like that happened to me with writing. I had to break with a certain life, with being defined as «the kid who plays soccer» since I was a child. Then, it becomes part of your life and gives you something that nothing else gives you. At that moment, you don’t give a shit about anything and you don’t care what anyone says.

I do care about friendship. I was lucky enough, and this will stay with me forever, to have made my first book with a brother in my life. A great friend, named Sabrina, designed the cover and did the illustrations inside. Juan Francisco Bo wrote the prologue. Paty Pujol, a journalist friend that I adore and admire wrote the back cover. In the end, it is always a team effort.

-How did «Trompe l’oeil» begin to take shape as a book?

-Last year, a friend of mine, Maxi Castilla, also a soccer player and a writer, invited me to a project. A cardboard publishing house was proposing to publish stories written by soccer players. There were five of us in total. I like to do things well and I started a workshop with Agustín Lucas to prepare those texts. At one point, we realized that there was something else, between my notes and everything. That’s how it came about.

-Why the title? I must confess that I did not know the word….

-First, that’s why. A word that many people don’t know. On the other hand, I like to listen to La Venganza será terrible every morning (a radio program by Argentineans Alejandro Dolina, Patricio Barton and Gillespi). It is a humor that amuses me a lot and accompanies me every morning, and that also raises questions and opens creative portals for me. One day, Dolina started talking about the concept of trompe l’oeil and also about Coleridge saying that, without illusion, soccer is useless. I looked up what it meant and discovered that it was a style of painting that sought to deceive the human eye. I kept that idea, that of something illusory. I wrote the word down on a piece of paper and forgot about it. Once the book was underway, I found that note again and I knew it was the title I was missing.

-How much fiction and how much reality is there in what you tell in the book?

-Everything and nothing.

Monroy plans to continue his days in the Ibiza that invited him to give shape to that «something more» he was looking for: «Here I have many people that I love and love me. I have the feeling that I can form a home, a place to share and also to be in solitude, especially because I have another book in mind that I want to face».

La entrada From professional soccer player to writer, Martín Monroy presents his first book: «There was something in soccer that was not enough for me». se publicó primero en La Voz De Ibiza.