Pilar Bonet, winner of the Cuco Cerecedo journalism award
Pilar Bonet has won the 39th edition of the "Francisco Cerecedo" Journalism Prize awarded by the Association of European Journalists. The jury decided to award her the prize for "the rigour of her reporting, her ability to cover an immense territory full of complexities and her willingness to understand what was happening to its inhabitants as they suffered various cataclysms: the communist project, its resounding crisis, the dramatic challenge of facing a new economic model and the emergence of a new autocratic leader who dynamited all democratisation and sought to reinvent the old empire. Her work has been a great help in understanding the war unleashed by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine".
The jury was chaired by journalist Fernando Ónega and comprised Íñigo Alfonso, director of Las mañanas de RNE; Rubén Amón, contributor to Onda Cero and El Confidencial; Ángeles Blanco, editor and presenter of Tele 5's weekend news programmes; Diego Carcedo, president of the APE; Montserrat Domínguez, director of content at Cadena Ser; Javier Fernández Arribas, director of Atalayar; Marta García Aller, columnist for El Confidencial; Javier García Vila, Director of Europa Press; Xavier Mas de Xaxàs, diplomatic correspondent of La Vanguardia; Rafael Panadero, journalist of the SER radio station; Gemma Robles, Director of El Periódico de España; José Andrés Rojo, Deputy Opinion Editor of El País; Karina Sainz Borgo, journalist of ABC; Encarna Samitier, Director of 20 Minutos; Paul Tobin, DIRCOM of BBVA; and Agustín Valladolid, Director of Institutional Relations of Voz populi. Miguel Ángel Aguilar, Secretary General of the APE, acted as non-voting secretary.
The Francisco Cerecedo Journalism Prize is awarded annually by the Association of European Journalists under the sponsorship of BBVA. It is endowed with twenty-four thousand euros (€24,000) and a medal designed by the sculptor Julio López Hernández.
H.M. King Felipe VI, Honorary President of the APE, will preside over the award ceremony at a date to be announced in due course.
Pilar Bonet joins a list of award winners that includes Anne Applebaum, Vicente Vallés, Javier Cercas, Rubén Amón, Florencio Domínguez, Claudio Magris, Félix de Azúa, José Antonio Zarzalejos, Xavier Vidal-Folch, Michael Ignatieff, Miguel Mora, Pepa Bueno, Enric González, Bárbara Probst Solomon, Soledad Gallego-Díaz, Sylvain Cypel, Juan José Millás, Antonio Tabucchi, Iñaki Gabilondo, Soledad Alameda, Walter Haubrich, Arcadi Espada, Adam Michnik, Jon Juaristi, Fernando Savater, Carmen Rico-Godoy, Francisco Umbral, Manuel Vicent, "El Roto", Eduardo Haro Tecglen, "Chumy-Chúmez", Maruja Torres, Raúl del Pozo, Juan Cueto, Nativel Preciado, José Antonio Novais, Javier Pradera and Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio.
A graduate in Hispanic Philology and Information Sciences, Bonet began her journalistic career in different press media in the Balearic Islands before joining the editorial staff of El Periódico de Catalunya and the EFE Agency, where she worked as a correspondent in Vienna, covering information on Eastern European countries. In 1982, she was hired by El País to head the newspaper's new correspondent in the Soviet Union, based in Moscow, where she remained for over fifteen years, covering, among other events, the emergence of the Polish free trade union Solidarność, the fall of the Berlin Wall, German reunification, the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev to power in the USSR, the 1991 coup d'état, Boris Yeltsin's Russia and the fall of the communist regimes in the Eastern European countries, among other events. In 1997, she was posted as a correspondent in Germany, returning to Moscow in 2001. She has published Moscú, Imágenes sobre fondo rojo. Estampas de la crisis soviética and La Rusia imposible: Borís Yeltsin, un provinciano en el Kremlin.