As the Minister of Culture, it is a great pleasure for me to support Jordi Sierra i Fabraís nomination for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in the category of writer. He is one of our best known and acknowledged authors of young and childrenís literature in Spanish.
    His prolific pen has produced a wide bibliography that covers all genres: from science fiction, to mystery novels, through poetry, essay, history, bibliography and music.  A tireless traveller and supreme expert in rock music, his outstanding personality does not go unnoticed, mainly for young people, his most faithful and enthusiastic fans, who eagerly consume his novels and communicate freely with him.  I would also like to point out the recent opening of the Fundació Jordi Sierra i Fabra in Barcelona and Medellin (Colombia) to support youngsters who want to be writers. Bearing in mind all of these things, I consider him to be the ideal candidate for this prestigious award.

    Carmen Calvo, Minister of Culture of Spain, 2005

    As the General Manager of Books, Files and Libraries I am proud to present the writer Jordi Sierra i Fabra as  candidate for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
    He is the author of over 300 books, of which more than 7 million copies have been sold, his work has been translated into 25 languages, and he has received 24 literary awards. However, these figures can not give credit to his human quality, his enthusiasm, his firm criticism of of unjust situations all over the planet. His literature is a means to create a positive state of opinion amongst youngsters, to make them come out of their passiveness, to shake up their souls and to try and make a better world. Marked by unfortunate personal experiences in his beginings as a writer, in his childhood and adolescence, he tries to stop this from happening to others, and for this reason he has supported solidary projects such as the Fundation and Award bearing his own name, by means of which he tries to stop even just one early literary vocation from falling through. For all these reasons, I consider him to be an ideal candidate who bring together literary productiveness, the love and faithfulness of his readers and a huge torrent of human values.

    Rogelio Blanco, General Manager of Books, Files and Libraries, 2005

    Jordi Sierra i Fabra best represents today a committed form of literature for youngsters, that tries to awake critical awareness in the reader and that is also a testimony of our times. His work is linked to renovating currents of critical realism in young peopleís literature.
    Many of his novels are real stories, from immediate historical fact and, therefore, they are not very pleasant stories although they are accessible to the readers thanks to a formal approach which has a pace similar to that of television language and the way in which adolescents express themselves.
    The first book that Sierra i Fabra wrote was never published. He was only twelve and had already created  a story that needed in all some five hundred words. But his love for music was stronger and prevailed over literature. The Beatles were his first passion and then the new rock stars. He opened and managed several Spanish emblematic rock magazines and worked as a radio music commentator and reporter who accompanied many music stars on their tours.
    His passion for travelling, as well as his knowledge of the wishes, illusions and frustrations of youngsters probably comes from this period.  His journeys are not alien to the wide range and diversity of themes present in his work. Long and constant journeys to other countries, other cultures, other people: a large part of Europe, North, Central and South America, Nepal or China.
    His work flows then like a long river also important for its size, and supported by reality, commitment and solidarity, with the honesty to tell what he has seen, as well as through everyday stories of urban youngsters, with their wish for friendship and love, since he is a writer with great skills for dealing with feelings .
    His main characters are mostly youngsters and also children of the same age as their readers. Despite their problems, they are positive characters because they know that they move in world that can be changed and improved.
    He skilfully handles science fiction, novels that criticize or instruct, or which include touches of humour or intrigue. He is not afraid to approach any subject, however hard it may be, since his delicate sensitivity allows him to find the right tone needed to tell stories that deal with of violence among young people, drugs, refugees, immigration, intolerance, animal in risk of extinction, unfair wars or the suffering of a first love that doesnít work out.
    Jordi Sierra i Fabraís work has created a wide community of readers and a phenomenal amount of sales of books for children and youngsters which is uncommon in Spain.
    As a first approach to such a vast amount of work, we have selected the following titles:
    Strawberry fields, which  deals with the new drugs that are in fashion for youngsters to take.
    The Wire Girls, which is about anorexia and the ideal of having a modelís body.
    The trilogy , The Cycle of the Earths (El Ciclo de las Tierras), which is about the relationship man-machine in the future.
    We will never be rock stars, which is about urban tribes and family violence.
    The Music of the Wind, which is about slave children in the Third World.
    Friday Night, which is about urban violence and alcoholism.
    And finally, two anti-war fables, The Bomb and The Soldier and the Girl.
    Jordi Sierra i Fabra has a literary universe of his own, a unique work that covers a wide of territory and an abundant flow of narrative resources. This definitely makeshim well worthy of the Hans Christian and Andersen Award.
                       
    Felicidad Orquín, Publisher, specialist in children’s literature and literary criticism, National Award for the Review of Childrenís Literature .       

    Jordi Sierra i Fabra (born 1947, Barcelona, Spain, 1947), is one of the most celebrated and widely-read authors in the Spanish-speaking world. With more than 7 million books sold in his own country, works translated into two dozen languages, 17 international literary prizes, more than 200 published works in Spain and Latin America, many of them best-sellers, he is one of the great narrators storytellers of our time.
    Sierra i Fabra, who began his career as a music critic, wrote his first book, the Spanish music reference, Historia de la Música pop (Pop Music history) in 1972. In the late 70s, he founded some of the most important publications in this genre, and published his 2 two definitive music encyclopedias, Historia del Rock (Rock history) and Gran Enciclopedia del Rock de la A a la Z (The Great Rock Enciclopedia from A to Z) . He moved away from music to exclusively dedicate himself to writing and travel. He has achieved notable success in many genres -- detective novels, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, essays, history, biography -- due to the varied interests that characterize him as writer and his constant thirst for learning althought it is in children´s literature and young adult fiction where he achieved wider popularity. His novels spring from realism and for the past 30 years, young people worldwide have identified themselves with his work. Jordi Sierra i Fabra is required in many schools in Spain and Latin America. He gives 150 lectures a year worldwide, another of his passions, which he combines with his nonstop travel on 5 continents. He travels to learn about people and countries, and absorb the energy he will later on transmit in through his books.
    Social consciousness is the main primary characteristic of Sierra i Fabra: the disenfranchised, defence of human rights, absolute pacifism, and freedom. He has written about the child slavery, youth gangs , extinction of indigenous peoples, drugs, teenage violence, refugees, racism, family relations, immigrants, new technologies, etc., always supporting his principles above and giving offering hope in every novel.
    A writer by avocation since age 8, he overcame a stutter thanks to the willpower he has always promoted in his work. More than anything. He loves literature.