Juan del Val debuted in literature in 2011 and did so with the help of his wife, Nuria Roca. Together they signed the novel For Ana, of your dead. It was her first story about a woman in trouble. Since this Wednesday, the name of the debater, omnipresent on the screens of the Planeta group, is added to the list of authors who have won. From Ana María Matute, Jorge Semprún, Vargas Llosa and Ramón J. Sender to Carmen Mola and Sonsoles Ónega.
Del Val left his position as a bricklayer, which he had accepted after voluntarily abandoning his studies at the age of 17, to become a bullfighting critic on Spanish National Radio and in the written media. “In 1991 I left the work, at 20 years old and without having finished 2nd year of BUP, I bought all the newspapers to call them on the bulls page. I introduced myself saying that I was in 2nd year of Journalism and that I would love to do internships. There was a certain innocence on their part and drive on mine, and everyone treated me very well. Now it would be impossible to do that,” in 2022. I went to the Faculty of Journalism to learn the skills. subjects and the names of the teachers in case someone asked him.
When he saw Roca present in 1998 Waku-Waku on the public network, he decided to meet her. They married in 2000. With her he abandoned the anonymity of the written press to jump onto television, appearing on many Atresmedia programs. He has also appeared as a talk show host in several of the productions of Unicorn Content, Ana Rosa Quintana’s company, such as It’s already noon o TardeAR.
When talking about Vera, a love storythe novel with which he won this million-dollar prize, the writer has explained in the last few hours that women have marked his life. That is why they are the protagonists of his novels. As is the lonely Candela, the fictional character with whom she won the Primavera Prize in 2019. “I have stretch marks, cellulite and an ugly dog called Chelo. At first she was pretty, but when she grew up her ass widened. The same thing that happened to me, saving the distance…”, laments her protagonist in the text.
Del Val also acknowledges that the majority of her readers are women. I commented on it before Pablo Motos in The anthilla program in which she has been collaborating since 2011, after having signed at the 2024 Book Fair. “They, for some unknown reason, when they go to see me in line, they put on perfume in a completely… excessive way. They put on a lot, a lot. One day you sign 120 women, who give you 240 kisses, with the perfume. I have spent months with the smell of perfume roaming around my brain, wherever I went. It’s uncomfortable,” he lamented.
One of his most controversial interventions on television is recent. “The freedom to create a literary work about any person and about any fact has to be above that pain that a mother can obviously suffer,” he defended on Antena 3 following the controversy over the launch that gives voice to José Bretón and that a good part of society considered vicarious violence against Ruth Ortiz. Anagrama refused to publish it.
“Naturally I am a feminist,” she answered, Planeta Prize in hand, to a question from the media. “I refer to my biography and what I write. In all my novels there is an evolution of women who end up being owners of their lives without needing anyone,” she added.
Juan del Val’s declaration of intentions, one of the many that he expresses in The anthill from Antenna 3 or in The Rock of La Sexta, also a network of the Planeta group, is that “it is written for the people, not for a supposed intellectual elite”, . “I want to thank Planeta for turning literature into a popular event. Commercial and quality are the bases of this award. To consider it different things is to fail people. You know who I am and to write I owe absolutely what I am,” he said last night when collecting an award about which social media users and part of the cultural media were already aware hours before the public vote that gave him victory was carried out.
