Premio SGAE Urban Gata Cattana: four finalists compete for €11,700 this Friday at the University of Granada

The 1st Premio SGAE Urban Gata Cattana will announce its winners this Friday 30 October in Granada. Four rap and urban music acts, chosen from 34 entries, will perform from 19:00 in Aula 1 of the Espacio V Centenario at the University of Granada, and the jury will award €11,700 in prizes on the spot.

The competition is organised by the Fundación SGAE in collaboration with La Madraza, the University of Granada's Centre for Contemporary Culture. It is open to SGAE members under 30, and in this first edition the final brings together a duo from Salamanca, another from Valencia, an Andalusian artist and a rapper from Granada.

The finalists: four unreleased works, from electronica to boom bap

Each finalist will premiere in Granada a song written for the prize. The rules do not allow it to have been released, shared online or performed live before, so Friday will be the first time it is heard. Each act will also play two songs from their repertoire. This is the running order:

• JUST_BECA & CALAMA (Salamanca) open the final with “Perdida”. The duo blend vocals and electronic beats with hints of R&B, drum and bass, house and pop, and their song is about accepting uncertainty and disconnecting from the digital world.
• Loli K y Xenak (Valencia) present “Toyak.o”, a boom bap track with a 2000s feel that grew out of their time on the song battle circuit and denounces the male dominance of that scene.
• Anita Gabay, an Andalusian artist trained in dance, composition, film and acting, sings “Enchant(é)e”, which the Fundación SGAE describes as a cry of rage that champions art as salvation.
• Akkerty, the only finalist from Granada, closes with “El tigre”: shamanic-inspired drums and lyrics about collective resilience. Akkerty produces, mixes and masters his own tracks, and his latest music video, “Sabe lo que es la traición”, came out on 16 October.

Some already have a track record. Loli K has released eight singles since 2023, the latest, “Doña Charo”, this year, and JUST_BECA & CALAMA have already played outside Salamanca, at the Canarias Surf Film Festival in 2024 and the Phe Festival in 2025.

The final: Friday at 19:00, by invitation and with no broadcast

• When: Friday 30 October, at 19:00.
• Where: Aula 1 of the Espacio V Centenario at the University of Granada, the former Faculty of Medicine, on Avenida de Madrid.
• How to get in: with an invitation from the Fundación SGAE.
• Broadcast: there will be no live stream, as the Fundación SGAE has confirmed to ModoFestival.

While the jury deliberates, Joha will DJ. She is a Dominican DJ based in Granada and a friend of Gata Cattana, with whom she once shared a stage. Her set ranges from hip hop and R&B to dembow, UK garage and amapiano.

Prizes and jury: €11,700 shared among the four

Nobody goes home empty-handed. The jury ranks the finalists and awards four prizes:

• First prize: €6,000. Presented by Ana Llorente, Gata Cattana's mother.
• Second prize: €3,000, presented by Manuel Marvizón, institutional director of Music at the Fundación SGAE.
• Third prize: €1,500, presented by Marina Hervás, head of the Music Department at La Madraza.
• Fourth prize: €1,200, presented by the rapper Bejo.

For works written by duos, the prize is split equally unless the authors agree otherwise, according to the rules. The jury is made up of Manuel Marvizón; Unai Fresnedo, from the label Taste the Floor; Ana Gallego, professor of Latin American Literature at the University of Granada; and three artists from the genre: Isaac Aroca, Putolargo; Bejo and Nico Miseria.

Having a literature professor on the jury is no minor detail. The rules assess the originality and quality of the lyrics and music, but also whether the works are consistent with what Gata Cattana stood for.

Why Gata Cattana and why Granada

Gata Cattana was the stage name of Ana Isabel García Llorente, a rapper, poet, political scientist and activist from Córdoba, born in 1991. She studied Political Science at the University of Granada, which is why the university is hosting the first final as part of its fifth centenary celebrations. She died in Madrid in 2017, aged 25.

Her work has continued to be read and listened to since her death. She released the EPs “Los siete contra Tebas” (2012) and “Anclas” (2015), and the posthumous album “Banzai” came out in 2017. Her poems were collected in “No vine a ser carne” (2020) and “Poesía completa” (2024), and the documentary “Eterna”, about her life, premiered at the Festival de Sevilla in 2022.

The Fundación SGAE prize is not the only one bearing her name. In Adamuz (Córdoba), a cultural association holds the annual Certamen Literario Gata Cattana, for poetry and flash fiction, which has no connection with this music competition.

The winners will be announced on Friday night. Other open calls for emerging artists can be found in ModoFestival's listings of competitions and grants.

Sources: Fundación SGAE press release of 28 October 2026; Fundación SGAE's response to ModoFestival of 23 October; rules of the 1st Premio SGAE Urban Gata Cattana and the Fundación SGAE website; University of Granada; Tribuna de Salamanca, Valencia Plaza, GRX Actualidad and Nuebo, on the finalists; Deezer, YouTube, Canarias Surf Film Festival and Phe Festival; Wikipedia and MondoSonoro, on Gata Cattana. Consulted between 23 and 28 October 2026.