The prodigious Eduardo Mendoza, winner of the 2025 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature

He has a distinctive style, rich with humor and irony , and a wealth of literary talent. He has been able to create a whole gallery of deeply human characters, as complex as they are endearing . But beyond all that, his work has managed to capture the social, political, and cultural changes in Spain over several decades.

We're talking about Eduardo Mendoza (Barcelona, ​​1943), a giant, a true prodigy, one of the most important names in contemporary Spanishliterature , whose brilliant career is punctuated by numerous awards, including the 2016 Cervantes Prize . And another recognition has just been added to this string of accolades: the 2025 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature.

"The jury highlights Eduardo Mendoza's decisive contribution to Spanish-language literature over the last half-century, with a collection of novels that combine a desire for innovation with the ability to reach a very wide audience, and which enjoy widespread international acclaim. His clear prose encompasses both popular language and the most unexpected learned expressions. His books are distinguished by their sense of humor and their casual, humanistic vision of life. The jury recognizes Eduardo Mendoza as 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," the verdict concludes.

"I need time to find the right words. Excited, honored, and grateful seem appropriate, but obvious. I've dedicated my entire life to what I love most, and now I'm receiving this very special award. I'm a happy man ," the writer noted.

"Literature is, for me, a way of understanding and enjoying the world. It's not a moral purpose, nor a tool to change things, but a means of seeing reality differently ," the writer has stated on occasion. "Humor is a way of approaching reality without falling into pessimism. There are tragic moments that need to be alleviated with a dose of irony. In some ways, humor allows me to say serious things in a lighter and more accessible way ," he declared in a 2020 interview with El Confidencial.

Eduardo Mendoza was only 26 years old and working as a translator at the UN in New York when, in 1975, he published his debut novel, The Truth About the Savolta Case . A book that has just turned fifty and was hailed at the time as "the first novel of the transition." But in addition to inaugurating a new era in the Spanish literary scene, the work soon acquired legendary status. Set in Barcelona at the beginning of the 20th century, the novel blends several genres—including detective fiction, social studies, and historical fiction—and revolves around the investigation of a murder, but it is also a portrait of the society and politics of the time.

From there, Mendoza has built his own literary universe, exploring diverse genres and themes, from historical novels and political satire to crime fiction and philosophical reflection. But always with his signature style, which blends the serious and profound with the lighthearted and comical , always with his keen insight into Spanish society and power.

There's, for example , The City of Marvels (1986), one of his most celebrated and acclaimed works, a monumental novel that covers the history of Barcelona from the 1888 Universal Exposition to the Civil War. And what about the hilarious No News from Gurb (1991), about an alien who arrives in Barcelona with the mission of studying human beings? The Man Who Spoke to the Dead (2001), meanwhile, is a crime novel with a humorous and philosophical reflection.

Cat Fight. Madrid 1936 (2010) marks Mendoza's new foray into historical fiction. Set in Madrid in 1936, in the days leading up to the start of the Spanish Civil War, it centers on an Englishman who arrives in the city tasked with authenticating a Goya painting. In The King Receives (2021), Mendoza delves into political satire and historical analysis with the story of a monarch's official visit to a fictional dictatorship, which provides the author with an opportunity to reflect on corruption and abuse of power.

Eduardo Mendoza announced his retirement from writing fiction in 2021. However, he later claimed to have realized that he didn't know how to do anything other than write and gave us Three Enigmas for the Organization , a parody of the choral crime novel that navigates, in his own words, between Mortadelo and Filemón and classics of the genre such as Agatha Christie and in which he mocks issues such as the Catalan independence process , the tourist invasion, the permissiveness of prostitution, and mobile phone addiction. Hopefully, it will not be the last novel that bears his signature.

He has a distinctive style, rich with humor and irony , and a wealth of literary talent. He has been able to create a whole gallery of deeply human characters, as complex as they are endearing . But beyond all that, his work has managed to capture the social, political, and cultural changes in Spain over several decades.