The writer and talk show host Juan del Val (Madrid, 55 years old) has won the 2025 Planeta Prize with the novel Vera, a love story. The finalist of this 74th edition is Ángela Banzas with When the wind speaks. The award was announced this Wednesday night during the gala dinner of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC), in Barcelona. The prize is endowed with one million euros for the winning work and 200,000 euros for the finalist.
“I hope it goes well for us and we agree with the jury. This is so amazing and so fantastic that it seems like it can only happen to others. Seeing myself here seems almost a miracle to me,” he said. “This is a novel of love in all directions: true love and interested love, which is often the same love. Freedom also has to do with that: losing the fear of making mistakes,” Del Val added as he went up to collect his prize.
“It is written for the people, not for a supposed intellectual elite,” he said as a declaration of intent with his award. “I want to thank Planeta for turning literature into a popular event. Commercial and quality are the bases of this award. Considering it as different things is failing people. You know who I am and I owe writing absolutely what I am,” he said.
After the 2024 edition, in which the Planeta opted for a winner outside the television spotlight (Paloma Sánchez-Garnica), the award has resumed the path of rewarding well-known faces as happened with the 2023 award, which went to the presenter Sonsoles Ónega. Written in the third person and in the present tense, Del Val’s novel is about Vera, a middle-aged woman from Sevillian high society, married to the Marquis of Villaécija who begins a relationship with Antonio, a younger man of humble origins. The ruling was announced in an event with less presence of authorities due to the Arequipa International Language Congress being held in Peru since the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, was in London. Yes, the Vice President of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni and the Catalan Minister of Culture, Sonia Hernández were present in the Oval room of the MNAC.
Known by the general public as a talk show host and collaborator of The anthill on Antena 3, of the Planeta Group, a debater for jokes that range from laughing at left-handers, people who worry about their microbiota or parents with highly capable children, the Planeta winner defended in an interview in The World that his intention was to be on television for a limited time because his desire was to dedicate himself fully to his literary ambition. Del Val already won the 100,000 euros of the Primavera Novel Award in 2019 with Candelaa fiction starring a woman in her forties who runs a neighborhood bar with her grandmother and mother. After that award he wrote Delparaiso (Espasa, 2020) and mouth (2023), all with female protagonists in crisis.
Married since 2000 to Nuria Roca, the writer and his wife make up a media couple and are parents of three children. The interest they showed multiplied when they announced in 2017 that they were in an open relationship and together they have written two books. In 2011 they published For Ana (from your dead) and, the following year, The inevitable of love. The talk show host is also known for his attacks on the left and feminism. “I have voted for the left all my life, but before voting for Pedro Sánchez, I cut my hand. He has no ideology or principles, I recognize the storytellers,” he said at that meeting in The World, where he also targeted the women of Podemos. “The Podemos feminists have done a disservice to their cause because, really, they don’t give a damn,” she said. The communicator also collaborates with his wife’s program, The Rock, and serves as a jury for the program The challenge. Del Val also dedicated the award to Roca: “This award is for you.”
When his novel was presented on Tuesday as part of the group of finalists under the initial title It’s not so easy to die of love and the pseudonym of Elvira Torres, the writer and jury member Luz Gabás defended Del Val’s work as an “agile novel about the desire for personal liberation of a woman trapped in a languid world full of Sunday afternoons.” Fate wanted it to be the winner of the Planet in 2022 who said those words. A few hours after Gabás won that year with his novel Far from LouisianaDel Val told in The Rockthe program presented by his wife, whose name was one of the most talked about at that party “where the guests fought over the croquettes.” “There are always pools to guess who is going to win the Planeta Prize this year, and there is always a name that appears that is heard throughout the day, which in reality is a loser that everyone thinks is going to win and, of course, he doesn’t win. This year it was me,” he said. If in 2024 it was joked in the hours before the ruling about the possibility of Pablo Motos winning, this year it was one of his close friends and collaborators who won the award. In 2025, the name that was most repeated in the pools since Tuesday was Juan del Val along with Máximo Huerta.
The Galician thriller, finalist
The finalist was the Galician writer Ángela Banzas (Santiago de Compostela, 43 years old) with when the wind speaksa historical drama with Gothic overtones written in first and third person chapters. Presented as The color of the rain and the pseudonym of Sofía García, the novel tells the story of a young woman born in the post-war period and raised by her grandparents in rural Galicia who, after going to the hospital for an illness, will discover the existence of a lost twin sister and that in that health center the horrors of experiments on people are hidden. When presenting it to the press, Gabás defended it as “a beautiful novel about loss, silence, family memory and the collective.”
“It is my most special story, it is a very intimate novel. It starts from a childhood memory and to this day it has marked my way of valuing life,” said the finalist. Banzas has explained that the story starts from the memory of when he was 3 years old and shared a hospital room with a girl who was going to die. “I conceived this story as a white sail on the horizon,” he remarked.
With a degree in Political Science and Administration from the University of Santiago de Compostela, a master’s degree from the Center for European Business Studies and a consultant for different administrations, Banzas has been labeled as the voice of the thriller Galician for setting all his works in that territory. He achieved notoriety with The silence of the waves (Suma, 2021), which was followed The Conspiracy of the Fog and in 2023 he published The shadow of the rose.
In the meeting with the press after the award, Banzas recalled that his Planeta finalist work is his fifth novel and that he has fully dedicated himself to writing since 2021. “The most important thing in this harsh winter that we are experiencing is that the reader who comes to our pages, that this novel caresses him inside, that it makes your chest beat,” he explained.
“I am a lover of what is easy”
“I am a lover of what is easy and an absolute enemy of what is simple,” Juan del Val said about his literary work at the press conference after the delivery of the Planeta. “I reclaim the word entertainment. It is a respect for the reader to make things easy for them. This is a novel that can have two readings: one superficial and complacent and another that can hurt,” he added.
Asked if he has felt mistreated by cultural criticism with his previous novels, the winner has been blunt: “Not at all. I feel mistreated by people who talk about my novels without having read them. If I claim commerciality it is because sometimes it seems something minor and literature must be something popular. It seems essential to me to understand that the importance of the author must be lowered to give it to the reader.”
Regarding the inspiration of the protagonist of her novel, a 45-year-old woman, she has said: “I nourish myself by what I live. I have been looking at women all my life and it is a universe that interests me a lot. I know many women who could be Vera, and in a way, it is also me.” “Naturally I am a feminist,” she answered regarding whether she considered herself as such. “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.
Del Val has defended the sex scenes in his novels. “I write about sex because I need it to explain the characters. In my novels there are people who die, have sex, eat, laugh and enjoy,” he clarified.
The two winning works will go on sale on November 5. This year the award jury was made up of José Manuel Blecua, Juan Eslava Galán, Luz Gabás, Pere Gimferrer, Eva Giner, Carmen Posadas and Belen López. In 2024, the finalist was Beatriz Serrano with Fire in the Throat.
The 74th edition of the Planeta Prize has had a record participation of novels: 1,320 manuscripts. “The book is in very good health,” said the president of Grupo Planeta, José Creuheras, on Tuesday at the press conference to present the award and the ten finalists, specifying that more than 46 million copies have been sold in the last year.