The jury pointed out “the perfect balance between violence and tenderness” in a novel that also stands out with its narrative structure and sense of humour
The work will be incorporated into the Club de Lectura de Tenerife Noir book club this year
The novel “Hierro Viejo” by Marto Pariente (Siruela, 2024) is the winner of the 2025 Ciudad de Santa Cruz de Novela Criminal Award, given annually by the Festival Atlántico de Género Negro Tenerife Noir to the best crime novel written in Spanish during the previous year. This was a unanimous decision by the jury composed of Rocío Peñalta Catalán, Juan Mari Barasorda, Arantxa Rufo, José Luis Correa, and Eduardo García Rojas.
The jury highlighted “the perfect balance between violence and tenderness” in a novel that also stands out with its narrative structure, sense of humour, and the depth of its characters—”fascinating and complex, full of chiaroscuro, perfect and surprising”—which makes “Hierro Viejo” a “well-rounded” work. They also emphasize that, “halfway between rural noir and a western with twilight overtones, “Hierro Viejo” skillfully portrays a small town lost in the middle of nowhere with a one-word name: Balanegra, and uses a noir narrative dressed in poetry to paint a blunt portrait of deepest Spain, plunged into a natural state of happy and idiotic lethargy.”
Upon being informed of the Tenerife Noir jury’s decision, Pariente stated: “Receiving the Santa Cruz is a tremendous thrill for me, first of all, because of the calibre of the other finalists, which is what gives the award its value, and because of the members of the jury, and also because I get to visit Tenerife,” considering that, following the award, his novel is being incorporated into the Tenerife Noir Book Club and, when he collects the award on the island in the last quarter of the year, he will meet with its members. On the other hand, the award “is a little daunting; it’s like peering into an abyss, because awards are always a double-edged sword: they bring a lot of joy, but then, when it comes to the follow-up works, they add a lot of responsibility.”
The Tenerife festival award is the third the author has received for this novel, which also received the Novelpol 2025 and the Caja Negra de Literatura 2024 awards. Regarding this, the writer said he was “more surprised than anyone.” “Hierro Viejo” is the third work by an author who writes at his own pace. Given the period of time between each of his works, for him, tackling a new novel is “starting over.” Furthermore, he thinks a lot before starting to write: “I spent almost a year and a half just establishing the structure and timelines,” he noted.
“Hierro Viejo” has been described as an “energetic and powerful crime novel in the style of a twilight western.” At the end of a life of violence, Coveiro works as a gravedigger in Balanegra and cares for his nephew, Marco, an autistic boy determined to learn the inscriptions on all the tombstones. Now, after so many years, Coveiro digs graves and buries people legally, but yesterday is never properly buried. Everything comes to a head when time comes to bury the eldest son of Rubí de Miguel, the owner of Carbac, the largest meat processing plant in the country. Marco has witnessed everything, and Rubí’s men take him with them. Then Coveiro finally understands that, for men like him, there is no possible redemption, that not even the evening light can soften the rough, blunt surface of old iron.
“I started with an idea that felt right in my head, but when I put it down in writing, it seemed crazy: to revive the twilight western, with characters in their autumn years, facing their final adventure, but to tell it in the present day and within the codes of the crime novel,” explains Pariente. Regarding his characters, the author assures that “there are readers who empathise with Coveiro; this is something we have to take into account, because, really, he’s a guy beyond redemption. But he faces a test in which the end is good, but his means are just as bad as the others’. Conversely, we have Marco, his autistic nephew, who is innocence personified,” he points out.
Marto Pariente (Madrid, 1980) is the author of “La Cordura del Idiota” (2019) – winner of the 2020 Novelpol and 2020 Cartagena Negra awards and included by the Gallimard publishing house in its prestigious crime series – and “Las Horas Crueles” (2022).
The jury and the award
The jury president, Rocío Peñalta Catalán, is a professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM). She is also co-director of the research group “Viajar por la Ciudad: Representaciones Literarias y Artísticas del Espacio Urbano” and a researcher on crime fiction.
She was joined in this task by the director of the Plentzia Noir Genre Encounters, Bruma Negra, Juan Mari Barasorda, a columnist specialising in the noir and crime genre; crime novel writer and avid reader of the genre, Arantxa Rufo; renowned crime novelist José Luis Correa, professor of Language and Literature Teaching at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC); and journalist, literary critic, and director of Aridane Criminal, Eduardo García Rojas. Correa and García Rojas are also literary advisors for the festival and members of the Tenerife Noir “Sindicato,” the team that launches this ambitious cultural program each year.
The Ciudad de Santa Cruz de Novela Criminal Award is one of the few financially endowed awards for novels published in the crime genre in Spain. It is awarded in cash to the author and is not intended for distribution or publishing, so it represents both recognition and an incentive for creative work.
