Eduardo Mendoza: "All I want is harmony, goodwill, bullfights, wine, revelry, and football."

BarcelonaSurprises can come from the most unlikely places: Eduardo Mendoza (Barcelona, ​​1943) received the news that he had been awarded the 2025 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature at the doctor's office, and a few hours later he received the media at the Jaume Fuster Library, suffering from a growing hoarseness. "I'm going to answer briefly and with ups and downs," warned Mendoza, although he was generous with his responses and patiently faced the "guerilla firing squad" of photographers. Among the 24 candidates from 16 nationalities vying for the award, the jury highlighted Mendoza's literary contribution, with "a set of novels that combine his desire for innovation with the ability to reach a very wide audience, and that enjoy widespread international recognition." "The award has, above all, a great effect of satisfaction, to think that just fifty years after publishing the first novel [The truth about the Savolta case] I haven't been sent to the room of bad toilets yet, and that's very nice," Mendoza said. "I've dedicated my whole life to doing what I like most, which is writing and being lazy, and in the end they've rewarded me in this way," he stressed. is a "provider of happiness." Regarding the role of humor in his work, he explained that after publishing his first serious novel, albeit with touches of humor, he opened "a branch exclusively dedicated to humor." The important thing about humor is not to lower the bar. You have to be respectful of the reader," he said.

An elegant, wise, and ironic author

The writer, author of already classic titles of Spanish literature such as The Mystery of the Haunted Crypt (1978), The city of wonders (1986) and No news from Gurb (1991), has often made Barcelona the protagonist of his novels, not always from the human perspective. "At that moment it occurred to me that a good way to tell the story of the city, and not just the city, but life in the city, which is what interests me, was to do so by sending someone from another galaxy to reflect a bit on everyday life with innocent eyes," Mendoza explained about No news from Gurb, before justifying his not having written a second part by saying that "you can't abuse aliens."

As was the case in this novel, now in the streets of Barcelona there is once again a lot of construction work, in response to which he has snapped that "the City Hall is a disaster" and that now cities "have the habit of having cosmetic surgery, perhaps because they are at a stage in life where one begins to see oneself with a desire for good."

"Elegance, wisdom and irony"

Mendoza has written stories, plays and essays, and had already won the highest award in Hispanic literature, the Cervantes Prize, in 2016The award received this Wednesday has sparked a wave of institutional reactions, including that of the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa. In a message to X, Illa highlighted Mendoza's work as "a unique blend of elegance, wisdom, and irony to narrate and understand ourselves." Precisely, another of the questions he received at the press conference was what he thinks of the National Pact for Language signed on Tuesday and how he now views the controversial essay he wrote in the midst of the Process. What's happening in Catalonia. Mendoza has stated that he was "doubly hoarse" and that he wrote the essay, above all, "for the people outside." "Let there be harmony, goodwill, bullfights, wine, revelry and football. The rest doesn't matter to me at all," he said.

After announcing that he would stop writing novels, Mendoza reversed himself last year with the publication of Three enigmas for the Organization, and this Wednesday he revealed that he's not currently writing any, but "it could happen at any moment." "When you've been writing novels for so many years, it's already a kind of diabolical obsession; the novels decide for me," he said.

An author who reaches all audiences.

Over the past fifty years, the writer has not only portrayed Barcelona through fiction, but also the social and political transformations of Spain with a sharp, critical voice, utilizing humor and sarcasm. "His clear prose encompasses popular language and the most unexpected cultured expressions," the jury states. "His books stand out for their sense of humor and their casual, humanistic vision of existence," they note. His literature is intellectual and popular, captivating thousands of readers with each new release. The jury, in fact, emphasizes that he is "a provider of happiness for readers, whose work has the merit of reaching the most diverse generations, who today recognize themselves in its luminous pages." His latest work, Three enigmas for the Organization, which blends humor and detective fiction, has once again been a bestseller, according to its publisher, Seix Barral. He had previously written the trilogy The three laws of motion, in which he showed he was in top form with a spy story in which Barcelona became an Olympic city and planted the seed of the Process.

Mendoza worked as a translator in New York and as a professor at Pompeu Fabra University. In recent years, he had lived between Barcelona and London, but he always returned to his city, both physically and literary. He won the Planeta Prize (for Cat fight. Madrid 1936, in 2010), Terenci Moix, National Culture Prize, Sant Jordi Cross and Barcino International Historical Novel Prize.

The jury of the Princess of Asturias Award is made up of Santiago Muñoz Machado, Fernando Rodríguez Lafuente, Juan Bello, María Sheila Cremaschi, María Dueñas, Jesús García Calero, Pablo Gil Cuevas, Francisco Goyanes, José María Arzuela Don, María Martín Rodrigo and Sergio Vila-Sanjuán.