Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, and Marcela Turati, veteran Mexican journalist and author, have been named recipients of the 24th El Mundo International Journalism Awards. Selected by a jury of nine people, Varadarajan won the award in the Press Freedom category while Turati was selected for Outstanding Journalist Work. 

They will receive their awards in February 2027. El Mundo is recognised as one of Spain’s leading newspapers. Established in 2002, the outlet’s International Journalism Awards were inspired by the killing of two El Mundo journalists – columnist and labour activist José Luis López de Lacalle, who was shot dead outside his home in a San Sebastián suburb in May 2000, and reporter Julio Fuentes, who was killed in November 2001 during an ambush on a convoy of journalists in Afghanistan.

Besides the publication’s director Joaquín Manso, the jury for the awards consisted of former Spanish foreign minister Ana Palacio, Corriere della Sera journalist Sara Gandolfi, Reuters Spain director Aislinn Laing, Telecinco director of news Carlos Franganillo, political scientist José Ignacio Torreblanca, journalist Felipe Sahagún, correspondent Xavier Colás, and El Mundo deputy editor Silvia Román.

El Mundo said that the awards to Varadarajan and Turati “recognises the courageous journalism, practiced where pressure makes it even more necessary, of two professionals from distant continents but whose fight for freedom and democracy concerns us all.”

‘A boost to independent journalism in India’

Speaking to El Mundo, Varadarajan said, “This will provide a genuine boost to The Wire and to independent journalism in India.”

A report in the Spanish outlet noted that “Varadarajan has been one of the leading figures in the resistance against the autocratic tendencies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist politician who has held office since 2014.”

El Mundo director Manso, meanwhile, said the Press Freedom award to Varadarajan “recognises one of Asia’s great traditions of free journalism in India.”

Describing Varadarajan's career, Manso said:

“Varadarajan has faced lawsuits, police investigations and accusations for scrutinising abuses of power by the Modi government. And when a new generation of Indians, the Cockroaches, began to rebel against the conformism of the official media, they found in Varadarajan the journalist who had already spent a decade defending the space of freedom that made this dissent possible.”

“His career serves as a reminder that India’s strength as a democracy, the largest in the world, also depends on those who challenge power being able to continue doing so,” he added.

Turati, meanwhile, has built her career working for Mexican and international media. Her two major works are the books Fuego Cruzado, which documented Mexico’s war against drugs through the lens of its victims, and San Fernando: Última Parada, which “chronicles her twelve-year investigation into the 2011 mass graves in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, and the disappearance of migrants at the Mexican border,” according to Social Study of Disappearance Labs. 

Manso noted how Turati is an example of committed journalism that “redresses injustices where the state is absent,” adding that “the price of pursuing that truth was that the Mexican government itself illegally spied on her in order to discover her sources and movements.”

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