Gemma Ruiz

As a journalist, she has worked since 1997 in the news service of Televisió de Catalunya where she has specialised in the cultural reports area of the news programme La nit al dia. She is currently deputy director of the TV3 news service. As a writer, she published her first novel, Argelagues (Proa) in 2016. A bestseller and acclaimed by the critics, this book tells the story of three women who, born in the countryside at the beginning of the twentieth century, had to make their way to the city, working in the textile industry and participating in the Spanish Civil War from the rearguard. In February 2020, her book Ca la Wenling (Wenling’s, Proa) appeared. This time, she presents a woman who came with her family from the Chinese province of Zhejiang to open a salon in the Barcelona neighbourhood of Gràcia. In 2023, she was awarded the prestigious Sant Jordi (St George) prize for her novel Les nostres mares (Our Mothers) in which she pays homage to women who were born during the Franco dictatorship.