The writer David Ucles (Úbeda, Jaén, 36 years old) has announced a temporary retirement of “a year and a half or two.” He said it first on the program In the code of Rhodes, a Cadena Ser space directed and presented by the British pianist living in Spain James Rhodes. It is a space for relaxed conversation between Rhodes and his guests. “In the summer I am going to retire; I will spend a year and a half or two without doing anything,” said the writer in the program, which was broadcast from the Luis Galve room in Zaragoza. “I’m going to write, I’m going to work, but I’m going to live. Now I’m not living, now I’m working,” said the writer, who has had two years of media exposure after the success of The peninsula of empty houses y The city of dead lights.
Then, in a telephone conversation with EL PAÍS, he wanted to emphasize that his retirement will be from August: “Because I have a very tight schedule until the summer. In fact, on Tuesday I am in Oviedo, on Thursday in Gijón… I will also sign books in Sant Jordi. I am still on tour, like the last two years. I would have liked to announce this a few months later, but as I see that it has already appeared in some media, I would like to clarify that the retirement is in five months.”
In the same conversation he explained the reasons: “I write very well outside my environment. I always do. I am going to take advantage of the fact that they have given me a scholarship in Venice to be there and then I will go to Prague.”
In an interview published in October 2025 in EL PAÍS, before his conflict with Arturo Pérez Reverte following a few days about the Civil War from which he finally erased himself and also before winning the Nadal prize, he already recognized his intentions. “(Uclés) plans to continue in this maelstrom until 2027, then cut it short, go to Prague to live for two years, start writing. ‘That’s the life I really like, going to a country where I don’t know anyone, nor the language, and start from scratch,’ he says.”