David Uclés, a writer from Jaén, has become one of the most prominent names in Spanish literature this year after winning the Nadal Prize for his novel , *La ciudad de las luces muertas* (The City of Dead Lights ). The novel, which will be published by Destino on February 4th, presents a Barcelona shrouded in an inexplicable darkness, where different eras, historical figures, and cultural references intertwine in a style reminiscent of magical realism.
The awarding of the prize consolidates Uclés as one of the most followed voices of the new narrative in Spanish , after the publishing phenomenon of The Peninsula of Empty Houses , which took him out of relative anonymity and placed him at the center of the literary conversation in Spain and much of Europe.
Nadal true to his literary tradition
In its 82nd edition , the Nadal Prize returns to its more literary roots by recognizing a novel that directly engages with the history of the award itself. The City of Dead Lights is set in a post-war Barcelona that, for 24 hours, loses all sunlight and artificial light and is bathed only in a strange blue glow whose origin no one can explain.
In this context, the young Carmen Laforet —author of Nada and the first winner of the Nadal Prize in 1944—appears as a possible cause of this complete blackout, in a direct nod to the prize's origins. Uclés himself has explained that the novel functions as a love letter to Barcelona and its literary tradition , with a constant interplay of references and homages.
The gala was held, as has been the custom since the mid-20th century, at the Palace Hotel in Barcelona (formerly the Ritz), on the traditional evening of January 6th. There, it was announced that the prize, worth 30.000 euros , had been awarded by majority vote to the work of Uclés, chosen from among 1.207 unpublished manuscripts submitted from both Spain and abroad.
The jury, composed of Víctor del Árbol, Juan Luis Arsuaga, Inés Martín Rodrigo, Care Santos, and Emili Rosales , emphasized the novel's "dazzling" nature and described its author as "a writer as innovative as he is unique, who reminds us that light returns when someone dares to imagine it ," highlighting the symbolic weight of the arts as a reflection of society's conscience.
Among the curiosities of this edition, the work was submitted for the prize under the pseudonym Oriol Arce and with the provisional title Ruge otro día estival (Another Summer Day Roars). Only after the announcement was made was it revealed that behind that name was the author of one of the recent bestsellers in Spanish literature.
Barcelona, setting, protagonist and myth
In The City of Dead Lights , Barcelona becomes a character in its own right . The action unfolds over a single day, compressed into 24 hours of total blackout, in which the city is transformed into a dreamlike space where times, architectures, and biographies that never coincided in reality converge.
Uclés describes a city where all the architectural Barcelonas overlap : from the Roman walls to a completed Sagrada Familia, passing through buildings and neighborhoods from different eras that coexist outside of any temporal logic. The result is a city that is both unrecognizable and, at the same time, very recognizable to any reader familiar with its streets.
In this landscape, intellectuals, artists, and historical figures linked to Barcelona reappear in a Kafkaesque fashion, "coming back to life," and are forced to collaborate to discover what caused the light to disappear and how to restore it. The plot moves between the fantastical, the symbolic, and the humorous, with scenes bordering on surrealism.
The novel continues Uclés's line of mixing magical realism, historical memory and popular culture , already present in The Peninsula of Empty Houses , but condensed this time into a shorter length —around 300 pages— and with a choral structure where cameos and impossible crossings are one of the main attractions.
The author himself has emphasized that the book is, above all, "a declaration of love for the city ." To write it, he spent six months living in Barcelona thanks to the Montserrat Roig grant, a period in which he delved into contemporary Catalan literature and the cultural history of the Catalan capital.
Gallery of characters: from Laforet to Freddie Mercury
One of the most striking features of The City of Dead Lights is the enormous roster of real-life figures who appear in its pages. Besides Carmen Laforet, the novel brings together authors and figures from different disciplines and eras who had an intense, creative, or personal relationship with Barcelona.
Among them are Mercè Rodoreda, Montserrat Roig, Ana María Matute , Roberto Bolaño, Antoni Gaudí, Simone Weil, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, and Freddie Mercury , among many others. They all share space and time in a city that functions as a crossroads where the past, the present, and the possible intertwine without hierarchies.
In the press conference following the verdict, Uclés revealed some particularly surreal passages with touches of humor : a scene in which Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes try to persuade Mario Vargas Llosa not to undergo a heart operation that aims to change its side, or another in which Salvador Dalí varnishes the streets of Barcelona to try to restore their lost shine.
The novel also incorporates appearances by more recent figures , such as the singer Rosalía and the playwright Josep Maria Miró, as well as scientists and thinkers linked to the city, in a kind of affective and cultural map where almost a hundred names converge. The result, according to the author himself, is a text that is "more dreamlike and surreal" than his previous work.
The jury emphasized that in this fictional universe the arts —painting, literature, music and architecture— act as a collective conscience , as if each character brought with them a way of looking at the city and illuminating it, even in the middle of a blackout.
A persevering writer and a publishing phenomenon
Born in Úbeda (Jaén) in 1990 , David Uclés arrives at the Nadal Prize with a relatively short but very intense career. Before this recognition, he had already published *El llanto del león* (Complutense Literature Prize 2019), *Emilio* and *Octubre *, and, above all, * La península de las casas vacías *, the novel that made him a sales and critical phenomenon.
This latest work, a sweeping panorama of the Spanish Civil War with abundant fantastical elements, took him 15 years to complete and thousands of kilometers of research. The book has sold well over 300.000 copies , gone through dozens of editions, and received awards such as the Andalucía Critics' Prize , the Cálamo Prize for best book of the year, the Dulce Chacón Prize , the Premi 42 Prize , and the Kelvin 505 Prize , in addition to representing Spain as a candidate for the European Union Prize for Literature.
Uclés' journey to the Nadal Prize also speaks of long-term perseverance . The author himself has acknowledged that he submitted his work to the prize continuously from 2010 to 2020. After a decade of trying, he decided to stop… until this summer when he decided to submit another manuscript, which has now won.
During his acceptance speech, the writer recalled that sustained effort and didn't hide his emotion: for him, this day is one of "the happiest days" of his professional life. He also referred, with a touch of irony, to the mixture of excitement and exhaustion that accompany sudden literary success and the media exposure it entails.
In addition to her professional achievements, Uclés has recently gone through a complex personal process , including heart surgery, which she mentioned when dedicating the award to her family and closest friends. She referred to them all as part of the "core of love" that has sustained her as her career has taken off.
From the Siruela label to the Planeta Group
The awarding of the Nadal Prize also represents a significant shift in the Spanish publishing landscape . With this prize, David Uclés joins the Destino imprint , part of the Planeta Group, which has published the prize-winning work every year since its inception in 1944.
Until now, the writer published with Siruela , the publishing house that believed in * The Peninsula of Empty Houses * and launched his career when he was still virtually unknown. Uclés took the opportunity to publicly thank the Siruela team, and in particular Elena Palacios , for their collaboration over the years and their support in publishing his previous novel.
The change of publisher is reminiscent of other high-profile moves in the industry , where prestigious awards have been used to attract authors from competing groups. In any case, Uclés himself has insisted that he maintains a good relationship with his former publisher and that they will continue to collaborate on the promotion and international translations of * The Peninsula of Empty Houses *.
Destino has taken the opportunity to emphasize that most of the manuscripts submitted to the Nadal Prize this year favor contemporary novels, with special attention to prose and a strong presence of crime fiction, thrillers , and stories with feminist, historical, or fantasy themes, in line with recent trends in the Spanish literary market.
Uclés' move to Planeta places him in a central position within the European publishing industry, with more resources for the international dissemination of his work and a prominent role in the group's literary fiction catalog, without breaking ties with the publisher that contributed to his consolidation.
A ceremony with a strong institutional presence
The evening of January 6th at the Palace Hotel was not only a literary event, but also a top-tier institutional and social showcase . Among those attending the ceremony were the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa ; the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni ; the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun ; and the Catalan Minister of Culture, Sònia Hernández , among other dignitaries.
Representatives from the political and cultural spheres were also present, including the Secretary of State for Culture, Jordi Martí ; the Deputy Mayor of Barcelona, Maria Eugènia Gay ; the former President of the Generalitat, José Montilla ; and the Barcelona City Councillor for Culture, Xavier Marcé . They were joined by numerous writers, among them Najat el Hachmi, Laia Aguilar, Lluís Foix, and Xavier Pla.
The audience, some 380 guests according to the organization, makes the Nadal night one of the most visible literary gatherings in Spain each year , where editors, critics, journalists, booksellers and heads of cultural institutions come together.
In that context, the choice of a novel that combines historical memory, overflowing imagination and the vindication of Catalan and Spanish cultural references slightly reinforces the idea of an award attentive to both sales and literary weight and dialogue with tradition.
Uclés himself has taken advantage of the media spotlight of the gala to emphasize the importance of rediscovering Catalan authors outside their immediate sphere, noting that he would like the rest of the peninsula to approach these voices that have marked 20th-century European literature more naturally.
Literary references and affiliation of Uclés
During the ceremony and in subsequent speeches, the writer emphasized that without the work of Mercè Rodoreda, Montserrat Roig, and Carmen Laforet, his novel would not exist. He dedicated the prize to all three in Catalan, underscoring the impact they have had on his understanding of fiction, memory, and the city.
Uclés cited Rodoreda's * La mort i la primavera * as one of her current favorite reads , and also highlighted her fascination with * La plaça del Diamant *. She also mentioned her interest in authors such as Blai Bonet , Maria Mercè Marçal , and Pere Calders , the latter being particularly close to her own inclination towards magical realism and fantasy.
In the construction of The City of Dead Lights, one perceives that blend of Catalan tradition, Latin American narrative, and European fantasy , where the city becomes a mental and emotional space as much as a physical one. The Barcelona of the book is, at once, postwar, contemporary, and an imagined version where centuries of cultural history converge.
This combination of references and the use of real people in impossible situations connects with Uclés's previous work, * The Peninsula of Empty Houses* , where figures like Lorca, Unamuno, Hemingway, and Picasso shared the plot with a clan of olive growers from Jaén during the Spanish Civil War. In his new work, this formula is transferred from the Andalusian countryside to the streets of Barcelona.
The author has pointed out that the new novel is even more dreamlike and surreal than the previous one, without giving up emotional moments or a certain background of social criticism, especially with regard to architectural barriers, the wounds of the post-war period and the relationship between city, memory and citizenship.
With the Nadal Prize, David Uclés reinforces his position as one of the central voices of current Spanish narrative , capable of combining literary rigor, imaginative ambition and a remarkable reach among readers, in a novel that once again places Barcelona —and its cultural tradition— at the heart of the European literary map.
