For the second year running, Leire Alday, a student in the 1st year of Bachillerato, has won the 11th “Osmundo Bilbao Garamendi-Muskiz” Solidarity Narrative Literary Competition in the under-18s category.

The South-North Solidarity Association ALEZ ALE, the Youth Department and the Municipal Library of Muskiz Town Council organise this annual competition with the aim of encouraging solidarity between people, creativity in the literary field and promoting closeness to other people. Osmundo Bilbao Garamendi was a missionary born in Muskiz and murdered in Uganda in 1982 at the age of 37, when he was sharing his life with those most in need.

With her story “A las 5 y 35″, Leire brings us closer to the subject of volunteering through the experience of a young woman who offers to look after the elderly in a nursing home. There she meets Mr. Montevilla, a solitary person, a maths lover who is not very sociable and whom she teaches to play the drums through his passion, mathematics.

Leire is an inveterate reader, a lover of intrigue and mystery stories. She approached the world of writing because she needed to put down on paper all her thoughts, “I have many ideas that I get from everyday issues, from what happens around me, then when I write, I transform them giving an air of mystery to everything I write”.

Without a doubt, her dream is to write a book, and she is not lacking in material, as she has an infinite number of stories which, although they are not finished, she hopes and wishes to finish them and to write her first novel in the future, which will surely be a thriller.

At the moment she is focused on her baccalaureate studies and although she is not sure whether she will opt for psychology or another degree, she does not want to leave aside her love of writing and continuing to participate in literary competitions, competitions that she is entering thanks to Edurne Larrabeiti, her ESO language teacher and the person who gave her the confidence and courage to enter these competitions.

For now, we invite you to read her story “A las 5 y 35” which you can download at the following link:

This interview is part of the 34th issue of the school’s digital magazine “Bertan GURE irakasgunean” which you can download at this link