Writer David Uclés withdraws from a conference on the Civil War because Aznar and Espinosa de los Monteros are present.

BarcelonaThe Andalusian writer David Uclés (Jaén, 1990), a best-seller editorial with The peninsula of empty houses (Siruela, 2024) and thelatest winner of the Nadal Prize by The City of Lights (Destino), has announced that "to be honest and true to the principles" he defends, he is withdrawing from the conference on the Civil War entitled 1936: The war we all lostThe event, part of the Letras en Sevilla festival coordinated by writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte and journalist Jesús Vigorra, is criticized because the program includes, in addition to writers, "two politicians who have violated fundamental human rights," citing former PP president José María Aznar and one of the founders of Vox, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros.

For Uclés, "Aznar is one of the people who have done the worst job in Spain recently," and Espinosa de los Monteros has co-founded a party that defends "anti-values": "A party that denies my freedom of expression, my right to exist, and defends values ​​that I don't share and that I fight against." The writer says he cannot see himself "on the same poster as these two individuals" and regrets the inconvenience for his readers. "But this is more important than the fees, the commitment to the readers that particular day in Seville... I can't go, I'm speechless," he said. David Uclés, born in Jaén in 1990, dedicated fourteen years to The peninsula of empty houseswhich reimagines the violence, crimes, and envy of war, but also the dreams and ideals, through the lens of magical realism. In his new book, he also delves into recent history, writing about postwar Barcelona.

The title, to begin with

David Uclés points out that the event, which was supposed to take place on February 2nd, doesn't even have a precise title, "because we didn't all lose the war, we all suffered through it, but the Republicans lost it and the Francoists won it." The federal coordinator of United Left and candidate for the Andalusian Regional Government, Antonio Maíllo, has also declined to attend because he believes the organizers have made a "totum revolotum united by the thesis of the title," which he also considers misguided. For Maíllo, the communication surrounding the event is based on "the thesis of equidistance suggested by the title," and he says that he not only does not share it but opposes it: "Because it is an attempt to revise the tragic and unequal reading of the Civil War. organizers "trivialize it and establish the rules of the game beforehand"

In a statement, the organizers declare that the withdrawal of Uclés, whom they label "sectarian and ignorant," as well as discourteous – he is accused of "and a" sectors in Spain that "do not want debates or reasons, but demagogic simplisms, trenches of hatred and contempt that make dialogues, agreements or reconciliations impossible."